


I’ll Find My Soul as I Go Home

by rabidchild67



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1980s, Attempted Sexual Assault, Dubious Consent, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Underage Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-12
Updated: 2014-09-12
Packaged: 2018-02-17 01:35:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2292068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidchild67/pseuds/rabidchild67
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spock is a lonely post-graduate student at Columbia who is just coming to terms with being gay. Jim is a bright, vivacious young man with as many secrets as scars. They both find an outlet for their emotions in the alternative club scene in late 1980s Manhattan – and in each other. But will Jim’s dark past ruin the tenuous relationship they’ve built?</p><p>This is my 2014 Kirk/Spock Big Bang story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my fabulous and patient artist, Numberthescars. 
> 
> Title is a lyric from the song “Temptation” by New Order, which was the inspiration to write an AU set in the 1980s. It is an era I know well having lived it, though there are bound to be mistakes herein.

**New York City, October, 1989**

“Happy Birthday, Spock!”

Spock raised an eyebrow at Nyota. “You have purchased me a balloon,” he observed. The thing was large and made of some sort of reflective material; on it was an illustration of a cartoon train. “With a choo-choo,” he added, raising an indignant eyebrow.

She grinned and held up a shopping bag. “With paper hats to match.” 

“And a cake!” Gaila said, bouncing into view and waving the bakery box that she held. “Ya gonna let us in, or what?” she demanded.

Reluctantly, Spock stepped back into his apartment to allow the young women inside. Gaila placed the cake onto the small table under the window that served as both dining table and desk, Spock’s desk having long ago been devoted to his projects. The apartment was tidy and spartanly decorated, large by most New Yorkers’ standards and tiny by anyone else’s. He had a single bedroom, a combined living and dining area and a galley kitchen with all the standard accoutrements. All in all, it was an adequate dwelling for a Columbia University doctoral candidate. 

Spock let the balloon go and it floated up to bounce morosely against the low ceiling. He stared at it without expression.

“Stop looking like someone kicked your puppy,” Nyota said, reaching up to place a paper hat atop his head and kissing him on the cheek. “It’s a happy occasion.”

“Sarek did not believe in celebrating birthdays,” Spock reminded her, and honestly, given the evidence before him, he was hard put to figure out why anyone would want to. “They were not deemed logical.”

“Logical, schmogical!” Gaila muttered, licking her thumb where it had gotten a bit of frosting on it when she’d opened up the cake box. The frosting was chocolate. Spock thought this might not be so bad after all. 

“What kind of cake…?” he asked, wandering over and eyeing the confection with interest.

“Told you,” Nyota said to Gaila and the two women traded a knowing look.

“Devil’s Food, your new favorite,” Gaila said, pulling a packet of birthday candles from the shopping bag and opening it up. Once she’d pushed them all into the top of the cake, she lit them and stood back as Nyota lowered the lights in the apartment.

“Wh-what am I to do?” he asked, eyeing the sheer curtain on the window above the table with a degree of concern – surely getting the candles too close to it would set it ablaze?

“Make a wish and blow, sweetie,” Gaila said with a leer. Spock raised an eyebrow. 

“It’s your 21st birthday – make it count,” Nyota added. 

Spock pondered. He had been taught such things were silly and childish, and he could see why his scholarly father would eschew them on principle. But these were the only two friends he had in this city – surely he could play along to satisfy them. But what to wish for? He found his life in general to be acceptable. The life of a doctoral student was a busy one, one without the opportunity for much socializing or, for that matter, the pursuit of any interests outside his studies. He suddenly knew what he would wish for.

“I wish for continued focus and an efficiency in all things, so that I might complete my doctorate ahead of schedule,” he stated, then bent over the cake and blew out all of the candles. When he stood, the two women were both frowning at him. He raised his eyebrows.

“Honey, you’re supposed to wish for something good,” Gaila said, biting her lip.

“I did.”

“Really?” she cocked her head to the side, clearly unconvinced. 

Spock frowned. 

“Well, anyway, let’ have some cake,” Nyota said, rubbing his bicep encouragingly. She picked up the chef’s knife Gaila had located and cut into the cake, distributing large slices to the three of them. “Eat up, we don’t want to be late,” she said, picking up a fork.

“Late for what?” he asked, already dreading the answer.

“Why, your birthday bar crawl, of course – 21 shots in 21 bars!” Gaila crowed, throwing an arm around Nyota’s shoulders.

“No,” Spock refused. “You cannot make me.” The thought of getting drunk just for the sake of it turned his stomach more than he imagined the alcohol itself would. 

Gaila pouted, but Nyota took pity on Spock. “Fine, fine. We’ll just cut to the chase and go dancing.”

\----

“Isn’t it a little early to be coming out?” Gaila said, not for the first time. They were walking along the rain-wet streets in a portion of the city known as the “meat packing district” and Spock had no idea what she was talking about – it was already 10:00 pm, well past the time he would typically be out of his apartment on a weeknight.

“Well, we thought we’d be hitting up a bunch of other places on the way here,” Nyota pointed out. “Ah, here we are.”

The building she stopped in front of looked, for all intents and purposes, to be completely abandoned. It was a three-story, square brick structure, with many rows of large windowpanes, though they had been painted so that one could not see inside. A wooden sign affixed over the entryway named it “The Enterprise.”

“Am I to understand that, given the name of this area, this establishment used to be an abattoir?” Spock said with disgust.

“Yeah, now it’s a meat market of a different kind,” Gaila quipped as she pulled out her ID and presented it to the young Asian man who sat perched upon a stool at the building’s entrance. “Hi Hikaru,” she said, batting her eyelashes at him. He smiled and nodded.

Spock shook his head and removed his wallet from the back pockets of his slacks. The young man working the door looked at it, then at his face very closely, then at the ID once more. “Oh hey, Happy Birthday, S’ch… Skoo… how do you say that name?” he drawled. He was clad all in black, with a studded leather jacket and a pair of spikes protruding from holes in his earlobes. His black hair had apparently been cut using a safety razor, and had been starched with styling products so that it stuck out in all directions. His fingernails, too, were painted black.

“You may call me Spock.”

“Sure thing, Spocko – don’t get too hammered, all right? Wouldn’t want to have to call an ambulance for the fourth night in a row.”

Spock gave Nyota a doubtful look – what sort of establishment had she brought him to? His father would not approve.

“Don’t worry, honey, I’m sure he’s joking,” Gaila said, then pushed on his arm to get him moving – there were now additional patrons queuing up behind them who looked impatient.

“I’m really not,” the young man said, reaching out for the identification cards of the newcomers.

Once inside, Nyota insisted on paying Spock’s entry fee – or “cover” as she referred to it. While she made the arrangement, Spock took in the décor of the small vestibule where they’d entered. The floor was made of rough-hewn wood, the walls paneled in a similar manner, both painted haphazardly with a dark stain. To the left was a small cubicle behind bulletproof glass where sat a cashier. To the right was a coat check. Directly in front of them was another doorway that had been covered by a heavy, blood red velvet drape.

When they entered, Spock immediately noticed that there was loud music being played somewhere in this building; its bass line so deep it practically displaced the air around them. He did not know what kind of music it could be – it certainly did not sound anything like the jazz his mother tended to listen to, or the baroque concertos favored by his father.

Once Nyota had paid, she led the way through the heavy drapes down a short hall at the end of which was a set of wide stairs. It was from down these stairs that the music was emanating, Spock could now tell, as it got louder the closer they got. They descended the staircase – which was very ill-lit – into… Spock wasn’t certain where they were going, actually, because there were a variety of lights that were pointed in multiple directions, some of them moving in time with the music, others stationary, and their light dazzled his eyes to the point of making him momentarily blind. He reached out to grasp onto Nyota’s shoulder. 

“I should have warned you,” she said, raising her voice considerably so he could hear her over the thundering music, “you need to just look down at your feet as you come down the stairs!”

His vision cleared somewhat as he took the next few steps, and he was at last able to take in the room before them. It was vast – it might have taken up half of the space inside the building, he thought. Though it was, by Gaila’s estimation, “early,” there were a fair amount of people already on the dance floor. They bounced and moved in time with the music, most of them quite uncoordinated. The aroma of sweat, cologne, and – was that coconut? – that wafted over to Spock was not exactly heady.

“What do you think?” Gaila asked, smiling broadly at him.

“It is very loud,” he replied.

She laughed and led them over to a bar at the back of the space, elbowing through the crowd that were standing about with drinks in their hands, watching the dancing or chatting.

“What’ll it be?” Gaila said, once they were near the bar. The music was less loud here, but that did not mean they didn't have to raise their voices to be heard. That, combined with the fact that half of the people he spotted were smoking had Spock wondering if he would be able to speak by the end of the evening.

“I will have water, thank you.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “It’s your birthday, Spock, I’m buying you a drink.”

“Very well, I will have fruit juice then.”

“Greyhound with extra vodka, got it,” she said, and pushed her way through the crowd to the bar. She returned with three drinks, all identical. “It’s $2.00 well drinks,” she said, as if that terminology had significance for Spock. 

He regarded the drink with interest – it was a pale liquid, poured over ice with a slender red straw stuck inside. One sniff told him it was grapefruit juice.

“Cheers!” Gaila said, tapping her glass against his and Nyota’s before sipping at hers with gusto.

Spock removed the straw from his and took a sip – and promptly winced as the strong taste of what could only be alcohol assaulted his tongue, immediately numbing it. 

“Oh my God, look at his face.”

“Gay, he’s never had alcohol before, cut him some slack,” Nyota admonished.

“Really? Not even a wine cooler in high school?”

“No,” he said and tried to give her the drink back.

“Aw, come on, Spock, it’s your birthday – have just one, will ya?”

“It tastes vile.”

“That’s because it’s the cheap stuff – the pricier stuff is better.”

“Is it?”

Gaila shrugged. “I dunno, I can never afford it. Well, I’m on ‘E’ I’ll be right back,” she said, brandishing her empty glass at them before returning to the bar.

“Surely consuming alcohol at this rate will be dangerous?” Spock said to Nyota, who, though she sipped demurely at her own drink, had nearly finished it.

“Drink special’s over at 11:00,” she said with a shrug. “We poor students need to save our pennies. Drink up – it’ll loosen you up for the dance floor.”

Spock glanced over at the area in question, which had grown more crowded in the time they’d been standing here. He would never in a hundred years – if he allowed himself such fanciful thoughts – have pictured himself in this place on this day with these people. It was very atypical behavior for himself; his father would not approve.

He held his breath and drank deeply, surprised when he looked down to see the glass was empty. It still tasted vile.

“Who’s ready for seconds?” Gaila asked, reappearing and handing him a second one.

\----

Spock followed Nyota to the dance floor, unsure what was expected of him. The alcohol he’d consumed sat burning in his stomach, but the warmth was spreading outward and it was not unpleasant. By now, the dance floor was packed, so finding an empty space where the three of them could dance together proved a challenge. At last, she seemed to find an acceptable spot and she turned, smiling, and began to move her body.

Nyota, an actress who was studying for her MFA in Drama at Columbia, had trained in ballet and movement as a girl, and so moved with grace in all things; her body moved sinuously in time with the music, her face calm and peaceful. Gaila, in contrast, employed a hip-thrusting and posterior-shaking set of maneuvers she called, “using what her mama gave her,” and if the reactions of the young men around them were any indication, it was successful. Spock tried to emulate them both with mixed results.

As the song progressed, he noticed how focused the sound itself was on the dance floor. Glancing about, he confirmed that the bulk of the sound equipment was angled towards this space, which made sense since that was the point of being here. He closed his eyes and as he concentrated, he could feel the beat of the music pressing in on his body. He opened himself up to it and soon it seemed to be reverberating around inside his chest, inside his skull. It was a heady feeling, to be sure, and he found he enjoyed it. When he opened his eyes, Nyota was smiling at him, and she danced up close to him, put her arms around his neck, and kissed him on the cheek. 

“Are you having fun on your birthday, Spock?” She moved against him until he picked up her rhythm and then they were dancing together; he rested his hands awkwardly on her waist.

“I believe I may.”

“You’re not sure yet?” she asked, amused.

He cocked his head to the side and she laughed, her voice as ever a calming balm for his soul. Spock and Nyota had known each other for years, since he had been forced to take a movement class as a Phys Ed elective whilst at Stanford. At 18, he was already a college senior, she a freshman, and they had been partnered together. They hit it off immediately, and had been best friends ever since. Gaila, Nyota’s roommate, often joined them, and the three of them spent what time Spock could spare for leisure together. That both Spock and Nyota had been accepted to post-grad programs at Columbia had been a coincidence; that Gaila had accompanied them was not: she said her life would be too dull without them in it.

The song they were dancing to faded into the beginning of another, the tempo change immediately discernible. It was a bit slower than the last one, and Spock found it easier to move along to this one. He and Nyota parted and he moved his hips with more ease than before. And then the lyrics started.

_How does it feel_  
To treat me like you do  
When you've laid your hands upon me  
And told me who you are 

Spock didn’t stop moving, but he paid more attention to the words as they were sung, a frown on his face as he concentrated.

_I thought I was mistaken_  
I thought I heard your words  
Tell me how do I feel  
Tell me now how do I feel? 

Spock had never before listened to what his parents would have called “rock and roll” though of course he was familiar with it. The music in this club was unlike anything he’d heard before – there were likely many forms he’d never heard before given his sheltered upbringing – and he realized it had a compelling hold on him.

_Those who came before me_  
Lived through their vocations  
From the past until completion  
They will turn away no more 

_And I still find it so hard_  
To say what I need to say  
But I'm quite sure that you'll tell me  
Just how I should feel today 

Spock stopped moving as this last line was sung, feeling the music swell within him. He was simultaneously uncomfortable and deeply affected by what they said. This was, as his father would have scoffed, wholly illogical, and it may have been the three vodka drinks he’d consumed in the last half hour, but he was suddenly moved beyond words. The fact of it seemed ridiculous to him, and yet here it was; this song was affecting him emotionally in a way that none other had done before. That he’d conjured his father’s scolding visage as he made this realization did not surprise him; he could imagine himself saying these very words to the man whose influence had been the most impactful on his young life.

“Spock? Is something wrong?” Nyota said loudly, standing up on tiptoe so that he could hear her over the driving beat of the music. 

He looked down on her, having forgotten she was with him, and shook his head in amazement. “This song, Nyota, its lyrics…” he trailed off, unable to put it into words. 

“Like he’s talking _right to you_?” she said into his ear.

Spock nodded. “It… it is uncanny.”

“I get it, honey.” She pressed her lips to his cheek and kissed him. “I get it.”

\----

Spock’s first experience dancing at the club proved to be transformative. He returned to _The Enterprise_ often over the following weeks, and was surprised to learn that each night they employed one or two different DJs, each of which played a different style of music. He avoided going there on Fridays and Saturdays, when the “bridge-and-tunnelers,” as Gaila referred to them, made the place more crowded and less enjoyable for dancing. He eventually settled into a routine of going on Sundays and Wednesdays – for “industrial” and “techno house” nights respectively – because he found he preferred those styles of music as well as the fact that less people frequented the club on those nights. He went with Nyota and/or Gaila, though many times he would attend alone. The staff grew to know him well, and he them, as nodding acquaintances on first name basis.

It was on one of the nights he went alone that he caught a glimpse of another young man, dancing alone like him, across the dance floor. He was a little shorter than Spock, with fair hair he wore short on the sides and in back and longer on top and swept back, like an old time “greaser” from the 1950s. He wore a black leather jacket festooned with many buckles and straps, a white t-shirt, jeans and boots, which was not unusual for the crowd tonight, when the DJ was playing records of a style known as “industrial” that featured driving drums and guitars and a propulsive beat that Spock enjoyed.

The young man danced to such a song tonight, and spun himself around in a broad circle, his arms up and out, jacket flapping. It ought to have looked ridiculous, but it did not. It was a set of gestures wholly masculine, and Spock found himself drawn to watching him. The blond danced with his eyes lowered or closed completely, shouting along with the lyrics at intervals. How he could see what he was doing was beyond Spock, though the other dancers on the floor gave him a wide berth. The beat of the song was a frenzied one, the kind of song that made young men want to thrash about in the small space, and not much to Spock’s taste, so he removed himself from the floor almost immediately. Unsurprisingly, most of the women left the space as well, and some of the men; those that remained were apparently happy to bounce and reel off of one another. Including the blond, who even though he flung himself into the waiting arms of the crowd, who lifted him up and passed him along on strong hands and shoulders, remained removed from it in a strange way, keeping that same rapt, intense expression on his face.

When the song segued into another with a much lighter tempo, the blond left the dance floor, disappearing into the crowd near the bar. Spock went back to the floor, but he remained distracted by the memory of the young man, the set of his jaw and the expression on his face, as if he was completely absorbed and taken by the music. Free. 

Spock wondered if it was what he looked like when he danced. It was certainly how he felt (half rapture, half pain), it was the reason he kept coming back here. He could not resist the driving beats of the music, the feeling of freedom that dancing brought him. It was a kind of joy he had never been allowed – it was not logical if there was no tangible benefit, his father would always say – and he couldn’t shake the twinge of guilt he felt each time he came here. It didn't stop him coming though.


	2. Chapter 2

Jim lifted the last set of boxes from the day’s deliveries onto the hand truck and hauled it into the storage room. “This is the rest of it, Mrs. Sulu,” he said to the elderly woman as he passed; it was Wednesday, which was bookkeeping day, and she was always cranky, so Jim tiptoed around her a bit. He stowed the boxes where they could fit in the old pharmacy’s cramped storage room, then took whatever pharmaceuticals had arrived and brought them forward to Mr. Sulu, for inventorying and storage. Jim wasn’t allowed to touch the drugs – not that he would want to – but he didn't want the old man to have to carry the crate around with that bad back of his.

“You can set that over there, James,” Mr. Sulu said, indicating a nearby counter. 

Jim did as bidden after first clearing away a pile of doctor’s prescriptions and other paperwork. He then ripped open the seal on the box with his box cutter and turned around. “I think that’s it, sir, unless you need me for anything else?”

The old pharmacist looked up from the mortar and pestle he was cleaning and blinked at Jim through his bifocals. “No, I think that’s it for today, James.”

“OK then. You’ll let Hikaru know if you need more help next week?”

“You may rely on it.”

Jim grinned and picked up his battered US Army knapsack, turning to go. 

“James?” 

Jim turned back around. 

“Are you forgetting something?”

Jim patted his pockets and laid a hand on his bag, taking a mental inventory. “I don’t think so?”

Mr. Sulu smiled and rose. “Your wages?” he reminded. 

“Oh. Oh yeah.”

Mr. Sulu shook his head fondly as he counted out the cash. “You are too kind a young man, James, to think I cannot afford to pay you.”

“But that big new pharmacy just opened up the street –“ Jim began to protest.

“If I could not afford it, I would not employ you. Some people may take advantage of that naiveté if you do not take care.”

Jim smiled and accepted the roll of small bills with a degree of sadness – the old man couldn’t have been farther from the truth. “Sometimes I forget,” he said instead. Mr. Sulu patted the back of his hand and slipped him an extra twenty. “Oh no, Mr. Sulu, I couldn’t – I didn't earn it.”

The old man pushed it into his hand. “I know the other money is for your college fund - you take this for yourself, James. Buy yourself something… decadent.”

Jim found himself fantasizing about the pierogi at the Kiev and this time his smile was genuine. “I think I will, Mr. Sulu – thanks!” 

Jim stopped at the front of the store and pulled his battered Walkman out from his knapsack, then turned to go, calling out to his bosses to lock the door behind him. There had been some robberies in the neighborhood, and Jim didn't want to think he was leaving them vulnerable.

Jamming the headphones over his ears, he hit play and let the music wash over him as he walked home.

_Have you seen her have you heard_  
The way she plays there are no words  
To describe the way I feel 

“The way I fee-eel,” he sang to himself under his breath as he turned West onto Canal and headed across town. It was after 5:00 on a Sunday and the sun was just going down – Jim hated Daylight Savings – but he did enjoy the late autumn nip in the air and the dusty scent of the leaves that had fallen from the trees in the parks. 

_How could it ever come to pass_  
She'll be the first she'll be the last  
To describe the way I feel  
The way I feel 

“I fee-eeeel!” he repeated, walking with a lot more bounce in his step than a person who’d been up and working since 7:00 this morning ought to have, but he was young and he wasn’t going to let a little thing like physical labor bring him down. Traffic was light as he jogged along, and he made it to the pizza shop in record time. 

Sunday night special – two cheese pizzas for the price of one at Luigi’s – Jim juggled the boxes in one hand as he shoved the Walkman inside his battered leather jacket pocket and headed home.

“Home” was a mostly abandoned building on the Westside Highway; Jim glanced around furtively to be sure no one was watching, then he pushed aside the piece of plywood that covered one of the blasted out windows on the basement level and squeezed through. 

The building was identical to all the other burnt-out and abandoned buildings on the block, a relic of a time gone by when a lot more goods were manufactured in the city. In the case of this particular one, it had been a manufacturer of beads and other “notions;” whatever that was Jim had no clue. All he knew was there were line after line of wooden worktables bolted to the floors, their rusted old fixtures harder to disengage than they looked, but they were easily repurposed as furniture when needed. Climbing the first staircase he encountered, he made his way to the back of the building, where a makeshift set of rooms had been set off from the main floor using materials from some of those very tables and a series of old, discarded drapes and drop cloths. Facing the river, the factory could get really drafty in the winters, and the drapes cut down on the breeze that often flowed through the cracked and broken windows at the front of the building. Though the sun was now nearly gone, the last vestiges of the sunset painted the entire place with rosy tones, turning the yellow brick of the walls the color of roasted pumpkin. Above the space Jim called home, several sets of fairy lights had been strung, providing almost the only illumination. 

“Kids, I’m home!” he called out as he got closer, stepping over the “threshold” into the shared living space. 

“Tough day at the office, Dad?” Carol said wryly, looking up from her copy of Baudelaire’s collected works. She looked tired; her blue-dyed hair pulled back from her face today and without the normal thick application of black eye makeup, she looked more like a cartoon pony than a fourteen-year old girl.

“You know how it is,” Jim snarked, carrying the pizza over to the center of their space and laying it down on the threadbare Oriental carpet that demarcated their common area, “workin’ for the man every night and day.”

A light cough from around the corner interrupted them as Pav came into view, the boy’s thin arms hugging his torso. 

“You kids behave yourselves?” Jim asked, his eyes giving Pavel a thorough once-over. He next glanced over at Carol who shook her head once, indicating that no, all had not gone well today. 

“Da, da, da,” Pav replied in his thick Russian accent. “You bring pizza?”

“Today was payday,” Jim said, opening the box and taking the first slice, “so today we feast.”

He took a seat on an old beanbag chair that seemed to be comprised more of duct tape than whatever it had been made of originally and sank back gratefully. He had to physically restrain himself from helping Pav to sit on the opposite side of the grubby Futon where Carol sat; the boy had contracted a nasty lung infection that was just this side of pneumonia, and it had weakened him. Carol ripped a square off a nearby roll of paper towels and set a slice of the pizza on it, then handed it to Pavel with an affectionate stroke of the curls on top of his head. She was the only one he’d allow to treat him this way, and frankly Jim thought it was a good thing – the boy needed someone to care for him, and Carol needed something to keep her out of (further) trouble. She took two pizza slices for herself and hunkered down on the futon over them protectively. 

“I miss anything today?” Jim asked.

Carol shrugged. “Got like eleven bucks for the bottles and cans,” she said around a mouthful of pizza.

“That’s good.”

“I was not able to do anything,” Pavel said sadly, and Jim wished he could ignore the wheezing in his chest. “I cannot walk one block without feeling weak.”

“You’re not supposed to be going out, Pav,” Jim said, worried. “You know what Bones said, you don’t want to get sicker – you don’t want to have to go to the hospital.”

Going to a hospital was the last thing any of them ever wanted. 

They each had their reasons for being on the streets; Pavel had been brought to the US from Russia when he was only six, having been sold to a perv who liked to make him play with himself and watch it; he ran away when the guy finally tried to put his hands on him. Carol’s story was not much better – her mom had moved them here from London when she was nine and had promptly died. Carol had bounced from foster home to foster home ever since until she’d just failed to arrive at the last one – and no one noticed. And Jim – well, Jim had his reasons for running away. 

None of them could afford to go to a hospital or else their names would be back in the system, a system that had failed to protect them the first time around.

Worrying about Pavel, Jim was suddenly no longer hungry. It had been nearly two years since he landed here in New York – Riverside, Iowa was now a very distant, very unhappy memory – and in that time he had managed to gather around himself as close an approximation of a nuclear family as he’d ever had. Carol was like the sister he never wanted, with a filthy mouth and a sharp brain, and Pavel was the kid brother he really had always wanted, with sweet smiles and an eagerness to help Jim out with any number of money-making schemes so that they could all survive. Which reminded him… 

“Time to contribute to the college fund,” he said, shoving his pizza crust into his mouth and rising. Heading over to the far corner, he lifted a loose floorboard and pulled out a lockbox that had been hidden there. He pulled out the key he wore on a loose chain around his neck and opened it. Inside this box was stored their collective savings, there for whenever they needed any necessities when times got lean and they couldn’t shoplift what they needed, or when they needed medicine like for Pavel and his strange cough. Bones, the doc who ran the free clinic, had feared it might be TB early on, but luckily that was not the case, and it turned out to be a bad case of bronchitis. Pavel had to visit the free clinic to get his lungs listened to, which was free, but the meds cost money that they couldn’t afford, and Jim eyed their dwindling supply moodily.

He was joined by Carol a moment later; she handed him some crumpled-up singles and a handful of quarters. Jim counted it all out, made a mark in the tiny composition notebook inside that he’d labeled “Ledger” a month ago, and handed her five dollars back. “Some walking around money” was what Jim’s mom would have called it.

“No, Jim, keep it all, I don’t need any of it,” she said in a low whisper.

They both glanced back at Pav, who had begun to list sideways on the futon and was blinking tiredly as he stared at the half-eaten pizza slice in his hand.

“How’s he _really_ doing?” Jim asked.

“Maybe the same? Maybe worse? He’s sleeping more – is that good?”

Jim didn't know and he wished he could at least pretend he did. 

They both returned to their living area and Jim grabbed another slice of pizza. “You not hungry, Pav?” he asked his friend. The fact he was eating at all seemed like a minor miracle – it had been a rough couple of days – but Jim was still worried about the kid.

Pavel took another bite out of his pizza and chewed. “I thought I was,” he said, though it was obvious in the way he could barely swallow it that he wasn’t.

“Eat what you can, all right?”

Pav nodded and stared at his feet. Jim gave Carol a look and she reached for a pill bottle. “Time for your antibiotics anyway, little man. Probably better on a full stomach, right?” she said, and made Pav swallow one of the horse pills Bones had prescribed.

The fact Pav didn't have the energy to fight with her about it in itself was worrying.

After dinner, Jim hung out and read for a bit, paying more attention to Pavel where he lay sleeping fitfully and wheezing on the grubby mattress the two of them shared than to the History text book he’d found in a nearby dumpster. By 10:00, he was feeling anxious, so he got up and pulled his boots back on. 

“Where you going?” Carol asked tiredly; she had nearly fallen asleep on the futon.

“Out to the club – feeling a little antsy tonight.”

She gave him the stinkeye. “You sure that’s _all_ you’re feeling?” 

He rolled his eyes. “I am a growing boy – I’ve got needs. You want to come with? Karu’s working the door tonight.”

She twirled a lock of hair around one of her fingers thoughtfully. “Nah, I don’t think so – I’m tired. Plus, someone’s got to look after the kid.”

Jim grinned. “Just don’t let him hear you say that.”

\----

It being a Sunday, the crowd at _The Enterprise_ was pretty thin, which was kind of the way Jim liked it. He really thought that the overall vibe of the place – medieval torture chamber meets the set of _Cabaret_ \- really worked with a minimal amount of people marring its dystopian aesthetic. As he bopped up to the door, he grinned as he caught sight of his friend.

“Hikaru,” he said warmly as they clasped hands. “How’s business tonight?” 

Jim met Hikaru Sulu at the library when they had both been reaching for the same copy of _Cosmos_ by Carl Sagan. Hikaru was a student at Manhattan College interested in studying astrophysics and Jim came to the library to get warm, but he also liked to read anything he could get his hands on. The two had become fast friends, and before long Hikaru had taken Jim home to meet his grandparents. The family assumed Jim was a local student, and Jim did nothing to correct them. Long ago, Jim had learned that people often made assumptions based on things they already knew or believed, and Jim had spent a large part of his life making sure they made the right ones about him. To the Sulus, Jim was an enterprising young man in need of pocket money to supplement his college grants, and he wasn’t about to inform them he was a 16-year old runaway from Iowa who'd been on the streets for years.

Hikaru shrugged. “The usual cast of characters. You’re here early.”

Jim shrugged. “It _is_ a school night,” he laughed. 

Hikaru rolled his eyes and escorted him through the door, where he made sure that the cashier let Jim breeze through without paying, then returned to his post at the door. 

Jim surveyed the dance floor from a point at the top of the stairs – as usual, the strobes and other lighting made discerning who was here nearly impossible, which was just as well. From here he could barely tell if they were all human. He descended the stairs and made his way to the back bar, which was usually a lot quieter. 

“Hey Darwin,” he called to the woman tending bar. 

She turned her customary scowl on him and barked, “What do _you_ want?”

“Why, to give you everything, my own sweet darling.”

She couldn’t keep up the act for long – she never could with him – and soon she was grinning and serving him up a beer from the nearest tap. “You say that like you mean it, Jimmy.”

“Oh, I always mean it, Dar,” he replied, taking the beer from her and turning back to face the rest of the club.

He wandered over to the side wall, adjacent to the dance floor to watch what was going on. Scotty the DJ, also a friend, was playing a good mix of techno and house, the occasional darker, Goth tune mixed in, and Jim stood there moving his head to the music and sipping his beer. He didn't much like the taste of it, but since Dar had not charged him, he figured beggars ought not be choosers

A movement out of the corner of his eye surprised him - he was usually more alert and aware if anyone was creeping up on him. He turned abruptly to meet whoever it was – friend or foe, he was just as alert no matter what. The blond man standing there wore the kind of suit the Wall Street types tended to favor – the ones who slummed it here at the club on Friday nights with their Swedish model girlfriends and pockets full of blow – but this was Sunday. The newcomer had the same hawkish, predatory look about his handsome face; taller than Jim and slender, with blue eyes that were too bright, too watchful, to _something_ , and Jim wondered what the hell he was on.

“Gary, I see you managed to slither in this evening,” Jim said, and turned his back on him. “They have a ‘snakes drink half price’ special tonight?”

“You wound me, Jimmy,” Gary said, shaking the nearly empty vodka rocks he held in his hand around so that that the ice clattered off the sides, and coming to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Jim. 

“Someone has to.”

“That can be arranged, you know.”

Jim gave him the side-eye. “Ew.”

“Don’t pretend you don’t like it.”

“I can pretend a lot of things.” 

Gary Mitchell was the smarmiest of the smarmy, an art dealer whose client base had taken a severe hit during the recent recession; he’d been reduced to dealing coke and X out of the local clubs, and he had been after Jim for a while to deal for him. Jim had refused – there were better if not more honest ways to make a buck. 

“Surely not with me, sweetness,” Gary replied, reaching up to run the back of a finger along Jim’s jaw.

Jim suppressed a shudder. “No, never with you.” 

“Cheeky bastard,” Gary said with a laugh. “I suppose that’s why I like you so much.” He leaned over suddenly and planted a wet, open-mouthed kiss on Jim’s mouth.

Recoiling, Jim pulled away as soon as he could. “Classy,” he said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

Gary laughed. “I’m as classy as they come. You’d know that if you gave me a chance.”

Jim scowled. “I know you well enough.”

That got another laugh, and another kiss, only this one was more like a prolonged nuzzle behind Jim’s ear. “What do you say, Jimmy? It’s been a while, I miss you.”

“Bullshit.” 

Jim could feel him smile against his neck. 

“I’ll make it worth your while,” Gary drawled. 

Jim thought of Pavel’s medicine and the depleted state of the College Fund and closed his eyes momentarily before offering up as real a smile as he could muster. “Sure. Your place or mine?”

\----

Jim paused outside the men’s room long enough to shove the hundred Gary had slipped him into his front jeans pocket before heading back to the bar.

“Hey, Jim!” Darwin greeted him, though the twinkle in her eyes faded as she saw the look on his face. “Something wrong?”

“Can I get a shot? Of something?”

She looked at him for a long moment before nodding and grabbing a bottle at random from the well. Jim dogged it back without even really tasting it and grimaced, tears in his eyes from the burn. He slapped his hand on the bar and Dar poured another. This one he practically gargled before swallowing. “One more, Dar?” 

She poured out the shot and then made a cutting motion across her throat – he’d reached the limits of her generosity and he nodded his understanding. He downed the alcohol – only now did he notice it was tequila – and whirled back around, eyeing the crowd on the dance floor.

At that moment, the song changed. It was something harder, the feedback from its driving guitars like a serrated knife over his raw nerves, the drums beating a tattoo on his skull. His heart rose at the discordant combination – it fit his nihilistic mood perfectly. He pushed his way to the edge of the dance floor and dove in. 

_Stronger than reason_  
Stronger than lies  
The only truth I know  
Is the look in your eyes  
The look in your eyes! 

Jim’s body writhed to the music as if compelled to by the music, and he spun around a few times, desperate to lose himself in the song, to forget, to just feel. 

_Just like a car crash_  
Just like a knife  
My favourite weapon  
Is the look in your eyes  
You've run out of lies! 

He noticed that a lot of the people already on the dance floor moved away, giving him room, and he took it, he took even more. Tonight he needed to just act, he needed this physical release to forget, to forget about his life and his problems, to forget about what he’d just done on his knees on a grubby men’s room floor in lower Manhattan, forget he ever existed.

Jim whirled and spun, his feet pounding at the floor, his arms up. He probably looked like some sort of crazy bird with what he was doing, if he stopped to think about it, but he didn't care. “You’ve run out of lies!” he shouted along with the song, desperate, yelling at who? Himself?

_You've run out of lies!_  
You've run out of lies!  
There's a ton locked in your empty eyes  
Get out of my life! 

Suddenly, someone crashed into him – or did he crash into them? – he wasn’t sure, but looking around the dance floor, he saw that those that remained were now thrashing about to the driving force of the music. They jumped and bounded into one another, bodies colliding and bouncing off of one another, feet pounding the floor. One smaller guy, Jim noticed, literally took a running leap at the now-writhing mass of humanity and bounced right off only to launch himself forward once more. Jim, who had been dancing somewhat removed from this small knot of people, copied him, taking a short, running leap and launching himself in the air above them. As if by some miracle or twist of luck or burst of the manic and frustrated energy he was feeling tonight, he managed to put enough air beneath himself that he landed atop the outstretched arms of the crowd, who, instead of falling away and letting him hit the floor managed to lift him up, up above their heads. Jim marveled at the sensation of dozens of hands holding him suspended above the crowd, the random craziness of being passed back and forth above their heads as his body surfed along. He laughed aloud at the idea of this group of strangers holding him up, their hands cradling him, offering him up for sacrifice to the gods of hedonism and pure joy in dancing.

He wasn’t sure how he made it safely to the floor, upright and on his feet no less, but he took a moment to catch his breath. Looking around, he saw a young man watching the crowd from the edge of the dance floor, where he stood among those people – mostly women – who had chosen not to participate in the slam dancing. He watched Jim with a kind of interest that was singular and focused without being creepy. His large, brown eyes regarded Jim soberly, but with a kind of longing and understanding too, as if he recognized something within Jim, some kindred spirit.

It was that or else the strobe lights were playing tricks on Jim’s eyes.

A moment later the song was over, and Scotty, wisely not wanting to whip the crowd into even more of a frenzy, switched to something lower key. The crowd on the dance floor let forth a collective moan of disappointment and most of them vacated the floor, though they were soon replaced by a few couples who danced together in a more sedate fashion than their predecessors.

Jim watched the dark-eyed stranger for a moment longer, then forced himself to move off into the crowd. The other man was striking – dark hair, pale skin, tall – and dressed all in black, but then so were 90% of the patrons here. Jim wanted to go to him, to strike up a conversation, but after his encounter with Gary, his head was still not on right and he didn’t dare talk to anyone who didn’t already know him – and would already be willing to put up with his shit. 

Instead, Jim melted into the crowd, heading over to the main bar to see if anyone was on tonight who liked him, so he could keep this buzz he had going with the generous application of more free beer. Luckily, Janice was on, and she allowed herself to be talked out of a draft Bud that didn’t do all that much to keep his buzz going, but at least it made his belly feel full. He wandered back over to the dance floor, watching the action, preferring to keep himself back. 

He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, but his beer was empty when he felt someone lean into his personal space and yell in his ear over the music, “You keep staring like that and people are going to think you’re a creeper.”

Jim jumped and looked back at Hikaru, who pulled back with a big grin. “Asshole,” he muttered and looked down at the two cases of Coors longnecks his friend had set down on the floor, hauled up from the basement. If Hikaru was acting as bar-back, then his shift at the door was over, which meant it was after midnight. “You scared me.”

“Better me than you – stop staring at that guy, it’s creepy.”

Jim ducked his head – he had legitimately been watching the crowd, but had kept the dark-eyed man in sight the whole time. He seemed to be alone, and had danced on and off all night, sometimes retreating to the edge of the crowd with a cup of ice water, sometimes dancing alone, always with total disregard for whatever else was going on around him. The expression on his face when he gave himself over to the music was mesmerizing and Jim wanted to know everything about him. “Who is he?” he asked his friend.

Hikaru shrugged. “I dunno, he just comes in most Wednesdays and Sundays around 11, dances like a god for an hour or two, then leaves. He never dances with anyone who asks – boys or girls. Waste of a cover if you ask me. Sometimes he comes in with some black girl, but he never dances with her. Mostly he’s here alone. Kinda like you, actually. Couple o’ creepy loners creeping around the dance floor creepily.” He grinned and bent over to pick up the cases of beer, but not before handing Jim one.

Jim used the sleeve of his jacket to screw the top off. “Fuck you very much,” he laughed before Hikaru began to thread his way through the crowd and to the back bar. When Jim turned back around to find the guy, he had gone.

\----

Jim woke the next morning to a cold bed and an evil headache that made him curse the moment his eyes were open. He looked up, bleary-eyed and panicked when he realized he was alone in the bed. Glancing at the battered black Swatch he wore, he saw that it was early – only 6:30 – so where could Pavel be?

He rolled off the mattress and located his jeans immediately, pulling them and his boots on and stumbling out of the semi-private area where he and Pavel bunked. They only slept together because Carol had forever dibs on the futon, but really it was because she slept with a knife under her pillow, and it only took having a blade pressed to his throat one time after stumbling in from taking a piss to have it also be the last. 

It was cold in their space when he emerged – there was a strong wind coming in off the Hudson – and Jim regretted leaving his hoodie back on the bed. He picked his way out of the building to the adjacent lot, which held another warehouse similar to the one they were squatting in, but this one was being renovated to provide pricey condos for yuppies in a not-so-pricey neighborhood. Jim couldn’t understand why anyone would want to pay to live down here, but he was grateful for the Porta-Potty the construction work had brought with it.

“Pav!” Jim said urgently the moment he caught sight of his friend. He was sitting against the chain link fence that separated the two properties, slumped over and holding onto the fence for support. As Jim got closer he could hear the boy’s haggard breathing, coming in wheezes and gasps and he didn’t seem to be able to get enough air. Jim scrambled through the gap in the fence and fell to his knees. “Pav? Pav!”

“Jim,” Pavel whispered, unable to make his voice any louder. “I couldn’t… make it… back…”

Jim’s hands ran over him – he was too pale and his face and hands felt like ice. At least he was still dressed in the thick sweater Carol had made him put on the night before. “Well, I guess that happens, huh?” Jim said gently, not wanting to alarm the boy. “Why don’t I help you up?”

“Da, da,” Pav replied. He felt way too light in Jim’s arms when he helped him up. They picked their way across the construction site out to the street, where Jim stopped to get a better grip on Pav's waist before turning to head downtown. “Jim, where are we going?” 

“To the clinic – Bones needs to have another look at you,” Jim said.

“No, I don’t want to, I –“

“That’s an order, Mr. Chekov, “ Jim says sharply – they’d watched some old war movies at the Angelika a couple of weeks back and, boys being boys, had fallen naturally into role-playing. Carol complained that Jim got to be captain, but then he promoted her to vice-admiral and all was well. 

“Yes, keptin,” Pav said and that was that.

The walk to St. Vincent’s didn’t usually take too long, but the going was slow with Jim having to half-carry Pavel. It was early Monday morning, too early for there to be much traffic out, though there was the usual array of street cleaners and trash pickup going on. Jim wished he could ask for help – but no one was more invisible than a couple of street kids, and to ask risked them getting put back into a system that had failed them to begin with.

Both Jim and Pavel were sweating and gasping for breath by the time they made it to the door of the clinic. It had been set up in the basement of the old hospital, meant to serve the neighborhood’s growing homeless population. Even Jim had noticed there were more folks hanging around in the last few months – and not just the usual contingent of fucked up Vietnam War vets either, these were whole families sometimes. The increase in the population meant that the clinic was always full, though not this early in the morning – the doors were locked when Jim and Pavel arrived, for security.

“Hey!” Jim yelled, pounding on the door with his fist and hitting the doorbell at the same time. “Hello! Patients here! Hello? Hey, come on! Medical attention needed!”

Soon enough, Nurse Chapel was peering out through the blinds that covered the entry door, and when she saw Jim she scowled – like usual. “Jimmy, it’s barely 7:00 – what the hell?” she began to give him shit until Jim moved and she caught sight of Pavel.

“Holy crap, he’s cyanotic. Bring him right in."

“No, I am Russian,” Pavel corrected quite seriously and that’s where Jim should have lost it. He chose to laugh instead.

Chapel ran to find a wheelchair and Jim was glad to relinquish his charge, though he followed her closely as she took Pavel to an examination room. She ran out and returned a moment later with a portable oxygen tank that she flicked on before threading a plastic mask over Pavel’s nose and mouth. Jim watched, wide-eyed, as Pavel sucked in the oxygen gladly. Eventually, the blue tinge he had to his lips began to dissipate. Satisfied, Chapel ordered them to stay where they were and left the room. Jim peered at Pavel with a critical eye.

“What is cyanotic?” Pavel asked, moving the mask to the side.

Jim forced him to move it back. “Means you’re not getting enough oxygen.” Jim had spent much of his free time the previous winter in the reference section at the library, attempting to read the Oxford English Dictionary. It beat freezing to death on the street, and the librarians were nice to him, sometimes making him tea and suggesting words for him to look up. He’d gotten as far as the Gs by the time spring had sprung.

“Then why not say it?”

Jim shrugged and began to root around in one of the canisters on the counter.

“How many times have I told you not to touch anything, god damn it?” said a weary voice behind him.

Jim turned around to see with relief that his favorite doc, Leonard McCoy, appeared to be on duty this morning. He had once been an intern who had been assigned a rotation in the hospital’s free clinic only to have stuck around long enough to run the place after a few years. He was a grump most of the time, and he always gave Jim hell, but he never turned down a patient in need of help, and he understood their needs well enough not to report certain things to the cops or social services, even though it was technically his job to do it. Somehow Bones knew more about Jim than the teen had ever told him, and Jim was grateful that he never asked questions that hit too close to home. Jim was pretty sure Bones had seen and heard it all, and though he yelled and grumped all the time, he never judged. 

“Bones! Something’s wrong with that medicine you sold us – Pavel’s not getting better.”

“Has he been taking it?” Bones asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Carol and me’ve been making him take it.”

“Have you been taking it, young man?” 

“I… well…” 

Bones gave him a thunderous look as Jim smacked him on the back of the head. “Pav, what the hell, do you know how much that stuff cost?”

“I did not want to waste it! What if someone got sicker than me?”

“Then you come down here and I’ll fix you up, kid,” Bones said gently, shaking his head. He then helped him out of the wheelchair and up onto the narrow hospital bed, making him lay back on the stiff sheets, being careful of the tubes from the oxygen mask.

\----

Three hours later, Jim sat in a chair beside the bed, picking nervously at his cuticles while Pav dozed quietly. He looked up as McCoy hovered in the doorway, beckoning him out into the hall.

“What is it?” Jim asked urgently, his voice low and tense, as were his shoulders. “The X-ray? What did it say? Will he be OK?”

“The X-ray was clear,” Bones replied, holding up both hands to halt any more of Jim’s frantic outburst. “But the antibiotics, they have to be taken – all of them – if he’s going to get any better, do you get that? Tell me you get that, kid.”

“I’m not the one you should be yelling at,” Jim protested, unable to keep the squeak out of his voice. “We tried to make him take the meds, Carol and me. _We thought he did!_ ”

“Hey, it’s OK, it’s OK,” McCoy said, a hand squeezing Jim’s shoulder to soothe him before he got too worked up. Bones was good like that – able to sense Jim’s moods and calm him down, sometimes even before Jim knew he was upset. “We’re just going to have to change the treatment plan for him, deliver the medicine right to his lungs, OK?” Jim nodded. “Now come here.”

Bones led him to a small supply room with shelving for all kinds of medical supplies – IV bags, bandages, and more – and went to a cabinet on the far side. He pulled out a small device that came with some plastic tubing attached to it. “This here’s called a nebulizer, and Pavel will use it to breathe the medicine directly into his lungs.” Bones paused, and the kind and understanding look in his eyes was almost too much for Jim to bear; he crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the doc until he continued, “Now tell me, do you have electricity where you stay?”

“Course we have electricity, Bones, we’re not completely destitute,” Jim said angrily.

Bones raised a conciliatory hand. “OK, OK, I just needed to know which model to give you – there’s one with batteries, but this one’s better.” He took a long time to explain how the treatment worked, and he handed Jim a paper bag filled with medicines. “And another round of antibiotics, and you’d better be sure that kid takes them, Jimmy, or next time I’m admitting him.”

Jim’s eyes went round at the prospect and he nodded. “I swear, Bones, I’ll make him do it if I have to sit on the little shit’s chest and watch it go down his stupid throat.”

Bones smiled. “Well, that won’t be necessary, but the sentiment is appreciated. Now, Nurse Chapel will administer a treatment to Pavel before you boys leave, to show you how it’s done. From there, it’s up to you, all right?”

“I can take him home?”

“The oxygen levels in his blood are in a good place – make sure he does nothing strenuous, and keep him warm. How are you kids fixed for coats - I found some nice ones in the hospital lost and found.”

Jim made a face – they were probably butt ugly. “We’re good.”

Bones eyed the t-shirt Jim wore and raised an eyebrow – it was a cool, late-Autumn day, but Jim hadn’t taken the time to run back to get his jacket before dragging Pav down here. 

“How much’ll it be? For the meds?” Jim asked.

As long as Jim had known him, Bones had the most transparent tells; he was now rubbing the back of his neck in the way that meant he wanted to hide something. “Well, I won’t charge you for the nebulizer if you promise to bring it back. There’s something for his cough in there, which’ll help him sleep. And the antibiotics.”

“How much, Bones?”

“$115.00”

Jim tried not to flinch but it was a losing battle. Luckily, he was wearing the jeans he had on in the club last night. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the money he’d gotten off Gary. “Here’s a hundred – I’ll have to owe you the rest, Doc.” He held the crumpled bill out in the palm of his hand.

Bones looked at the hundred and a kind of sadness crossed his face. “Where’d you get that, Jim?” he asked gently.

“I earned it.”

“You want to tell me how?”

Jim stared at the bill instead of looking Bones in the eye. “I do not.”

McCoy took it and Jim lowered his hand. “Christine’ll give you some condoms before you go.”

“I don’t want any.”

“You’ll take ‘em, and you’ll use ‘em or so help me, Jim…”

“So help you Jim what?” he asked, tired of having this conversation over and over.

“You know it’s more’n a dose o’ the clap to be worrying about out there, right? I’m seeing more and more AIDS cases in here each week.”

Jim flinched.

“Promise me you’re being safe, that’s all I’m asking.”

Jim looked up at him and thought about the hazards he and his family ran into on a daily basis – the junkies down by the river, the pimps and their whores down by the tunnel, the fact that Gary was continually trying to get Jim to deal coke and X for him – and he wondered if the old man could even handle his reality. Instead, he just delivered his patented James Tiberius Kirk smile and said with the most angelic expression his face could muster on short notice, “I am safety’s poster child, Bones.”

He turned around to get back to Pavel’s bedside before he had to see the sad look in Bones’ eyes again.


	3. Chapter 3

It was a Sunday in mid-November and Spock sat at his desk, an arrangement of circuit boards, a soldering iron, and other electronic components and materials arrayed before him. He was working on a prototype for a peripheral component interface board that could handle levels of information throughput that far exceeded those that were currently available to the market. He found this kind of tinkering to be his passion and a worthy pastime, his father’s disapproval of it notwithstanding. He was also awaiting his weekly call from his parents, to commence at 3:00 PM sharp, and working on the components assuaged the unease he felt at the weekly contact.

The calls began as a weekly ritual Spock indulged his mother in. With him now in New York and his parents in Palo Alto, she did not think she could thrive without at least weekly contact with him. When he had attended Stanford, he was of course always close to home, and so getting together for their weekly Sunday lunch was a tradition that Spock even came to look forward to. When he’d been accepted into the doctoral program in Logic at Columbia, she’d requested that they keep their weekly date, just over the phone. The calls lacked the intimacy of their past meetings, and truth be told, Spock missed having his mother’s calming presence in his life, if only for an hour per week. But lately he’d grown to dread them, because they so often followed the same pattern.

His phone rang at precisely 3:00 PM – lunchtime in California, to keep the tradition alive – and Spock rose to go and answer it. His phone sat on his nightstand in his bedroom, and he sat upright on the bed’s edge, holding the phone lightly in his left hand. “Hello?”

“Spock, darling, hello,” Amanda said in her warm voice that always sounded as if she was on the verge of laughter. “How are you today?”

“I am well. I working.”

“Oh dear, that doesn’t sound very fun on what surely must be a pleasant Autumn day in New York.”

“The weather is very fine, but I find this to be just as diverting as a walk in the park.”

“I know you do, dear, but the weather won’t stay nice forever.” 

Amanda had been born and raised in upstate New York, and was delighted when Spock was offered a slot at Columbia. She had immediately put him in touch with cousins of hers that Spock had never met before. They had taken him to dinner during his first week in the city, and it had been a dismal affair to say the least – they did nothing but complain about his mother’s lack of visits over the years and how overbearing they thought Sarek. Their implication was that Sarek was keeping Amanda from them, though Spock suspected the reason she never visited was due to their insufferable tendency to gossip about everything.

“That is extremely probable, Mother.” Amanda sighed, and Spock added,“If it is any consolation to you, I intend to meet Nyota for dinner later on in a place called Astoria.”

“Nyota, eh?” Amanda asked in the tone of mothers of unpaired sons everywhere.

Spock suppressed a sigh. “You know she is a close friend only, and nothing more.”

“All right, then,” Amanda replied in a leading tone, but Spock refused to be baited. His typical response, that his studies kept him too busy to pursue personal relationships, would certainly apply here, but he was beginning to feel uncomfortable with it. It had not been long since he realized that his lack of interest in females was due to the fact he preferred men, but now that he knew his mind it felt disingenuous to dissemble, particularly with his mother. However, some self-preservation instinct within him – though he would not have ruled out cowardice – made him keep this truth from her, as well as most people. 

“And you know very well that my studies, as well as the added responsibilities as a teaching assistant, preclude me from pursuing anything like a romantic entanglement.”

“Yes, darling, I know,” she said. “Now tell me about your students – are undergrads all as clueless today as they were when I was a TA? My, the stories I could tell you…” 

She did go on, telling a very humorous anecdote from her days earning her masters in linguistics studies, one that Spock had never heard before, of a mildly salacious nature. It amused Spock that his mother believed him finally old enough – at 21 – to hear this kind of content from her, as if he would have been scandalized at a younger age. That said, given who she was married to, she rarely got to bring out this side to her personality, as Sarek tended to be impatient with topics he deemed illogical.

“Oh, here’s your father,” she said after she had completed the tale and the conversation had moved on to more sedate matters such as Spock’s plans for the Thanksgiving holidays. “Speak to him.”

Spock closed his eyes as he listened to the phone change hands. “Spock, it is your father,” Sarek’s deep, sonorous voice announced.

“Yes, good afternoon.”

“I trust your studies are going well.”

“They are, sir.” Spock did not go into great detail; his father did not approve of the fact Spock had chosen to study at Columbia over Stanford, and Spock was loath to give him anything more to criticize. What’s more, Sarek found Spock’s tinkering with electronics to be beneath his son’s intellect. 

“Do you continue to work on technologies that have already been perfected?”

Spock flinched; he would not escape his father’s usual criticisms this week. “I would not deem the field of telecommunications to have been ‘perfected.’” Spock found the potential in the field, particularly the potential of the technology in networking and telecommunications to change the lives of everyone, to be more exciting than anything he had ever worked on before.

“No? Then what is it we are talking on? I fail to see the need for a portable telephone when the ones that exist in everyone’s homes are perfectly adequate. It is a frivolous extravagance, to say the least.”

Spock held his tongue. So-called cellular technologies were already growing in popularity in Europe and proved to be one of the fastest growing and most exciting fields in the high tech arena, and Spock found it fascinating. “Yes, sir.”

“If you agree with me, then why do you continue to pursue it?”

“I do not agree with you, I merely wish to avoid having this conversation with you again. You have your opinion, and I have mine. To continue to discuss it when neither of us will change his opinion is illogical.”

There was a silence at the other end of the phone, and then, “When I think what might have been for you, Spock, it disappoints me.”

Spock closed his eyes – this was not the first time his father had expressed this or similar sentiments. “They say that is an inevitable part of growth, do they not – the ability to learn to live with disappointment?” he said and hung up the phone.

Spock finished his work, but felt unsettled for the remainder of the afternoon and into the evening. It being a Sunday, he dressed himself in appropriate attire and prepared to go out for another night of dancing. “Appropriate attire” at the club seemed to vary based on the night of the week, but Spock had found some things that worked for him and that he felt comfortable in. Tonight they included a pair of black leather pants Nyota had unearthed at a consignment shop, a tight-fitting black t-shirt, and a soft black sweater his mother had hand-knitted for him as soon as he’d accepted the position in the program at Columbia. She had fretted he would be cold in New York – a legitimate concern as Spock was often cold – though with this one she had overcompensated and Spock tended to use the sweater as outerwear. 

Spock did his best to put the conversation with his father out of his mind, though he was unsuccessful. Sarek’s constant belittling of Spock’s pursuits had long been a point of contention between them – the latest of many over the years – and the fact that Spock had proven immovable to his father’s dictates on it only made Sarek’s manner toward him colder and more critical than ever. It should satisfy Spock that he’d once again managed to stick up for himself, but instead he felt the customary anxiety an encounter with his father engendered in him, which in turn made him feel angry. Dealing with these negative emotions had been something he’d been able to do easily in the past – to repress them had come more and more easily over the years – but for some reason his mind was unable to quiet down this evening. Spock hoped he’d be able to find achieve this at _The Enterprise._

It had come as a surprise to Spock that dancing at the club should prove so therapeutic for him. It was not just the physical release of the exercise that helped ease his mind, though he could logically understand that that was part of it. No, what appealed most to him was the emotional release he felt when the music played. Not only could he physically feel it through the driving bass lines of the music he favored, but the lyrics spoke to him in ways he had never anticipated. Here were men and women whose words spoke to the alienation and, yes, _anger_ he sometimes felt, emotions he could not have recognized or owned before, but the music helped him to deal with. 

At least, most of the time.

\----

_The Enterprise_ was more crowded than was usual for this early on a Sunday. Spock couldn’t begin to think why, though he suspected it had to do with the disc jockey, a Scotsman whose talent at mixing danceable versions of the industrial music that predominated on Sunday nights had clearly gained him a following.

Spock stood on the fringes of the dance floor, but the music was not moving him tonight. For the first time since he began coming here, he was not inspired to dance by the mere beat of the music. He was not so naïve that he did not realize it was because of his conversation with his father, but he was reminded by the presence of the many other inebriated patrons around him that the first time he went dancing, the three cocktails he had consumed that night had helped to warm him up. They called alcohol the great social lubricant, and Spock had to allow that the term was accurate.

He made his way to the smaller bar at the back of the club only because he was more familiar with it. The young woman who typically manned it was shrewd and had a bawdy sense of humor that Spock found refreshing. Tonight she had tinted her very close-cropped hair a shade of pale blue that Spock found very appealing. “What can I get you?” she said, nodding as she recognized him. As a regular patron, many of the club’s staff knew Spock on sight if not by name. 

“I will have some tequila, please.”

Her eyes widened slightly – Spock’s typical order was a sparkling water, which she never charged him for and for which he tipped her $5 each time. “Well or good stuff?”

Spock thought for a moment. “The good stuff, please.”

Nodding, she briefly left to retrieve a bottle and a squat rocks glass. “If you spring for the good stuff, you get a proper glass,” she explained when Spock saw she had not used the usual shot glasses that most patrons typically asked for. She laid a wedge of lime on a cocktail napkin and set the bottle aside. “That’ll be $10.50.”

Spock was just reaching for his wallet when a pale hand – a man’s hand – set a fifty-dollar bill down on the bar. “It’s on me,” a voice drawled, and Spock looked up to find a not unattractive man of about thirty dressed in a shiny silk suit standing beside him. 

“I thank you, but I can pay for my own drinks,” Spock informed him.

“But won’t you let me do it for you?” the man asked. “I could see myself paying for a lot of things for you.”

“I have the means,” Spock insisted, “and I do not wish to set a precedent for owing anyone anything in this type of scenario.”

“What type of scenario would that be?”

“Why, a pick-up of course,” Spock replied.

The barkeep rolled her eyes at this exchange and began to look impatient. Elsewhere, other patrons began to clamor for her attention. “Can you kids hurry it up? I’ve got customers,” she said. 

The man pressed the bill into her hand. “Here you go, Darwin,” he said dismissively. “You don’t owe me anything but your name,” he said to Spock.

“I am called Spock.”

“Spock,” the man repeated, trying the word out in his mouth and looking confused. “Nice to meet you, Spock. My name is Gary.” He held out his hand, which Spock was compelled by courtesy to take.

“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Gary,” Spock said, shaking the proffered hand. It was over-warm and slightly moist, not at all pleasant. At that moment, Darwin returned from the cash register and, Spock noticed, she shorted Gary five dollars.

Gary held up the drink that sat on the bar in front of him – a glass of champagne that had been poured from a bottle that Spock now noticed sat in an ice bucket on the bar. A slave to social customs once more, Spock reluctantly tapped his glass against Gary’s and they both drank.

“I’ve seen you here before haven’t I?” Gary asked.

“I am a frequent patron,” Spock replied, taking up the lime and squeezing it between his teeth, as was customary.

“Me too – can’t believe we’ve never spoken. I thought I knew everybody.” He reached out with his right hand and traced a line down the back of Spock’s hand. Flustered, Spock dropped his hand from where it rested on the bar and settled it at the small of his back. 

“Yes. Well, apparently not,” Spock replied. He finished his drink – he did not much like the flavor, though it left a pleasant warming sensation in his stomach – and then returned the glass to the bar. 

“Can I get you another?” Gary was already gesturing for the bartender to come over. She brought the same bottle and poured a healthy measure into Spock’s glass, then retreated with the twenty-dollar bill that Gary slid across the bar.

“I would prefer to pay for my own,” Spock reiterated. While he found Gary attractive enough, he was unused to such attentions and felt uncomfortable to be so scrutinized. 

“It pleases me to treat you,” Gary said, his teeth so white they practically glowed as the lighting switched along with whatever song was currently playing on the dance floor. 

“Thank you, but –“ Spock froze as Gary leaned forward and placed a warm hand on Spock’s waist. “I –“ Spock was at a loss for words; he had literally never been on the receiving end of such attentions and it was disconcerting. “You are very kind, but I feel it is only fair I inform you your attentions will not result in any kind of reciprocation in the form of sexual or other favors.”

Gary laughed. “Well, I guess you win some and you lose some,” he said in a tone of voice that Spock thought sounded less affable than the words themselves, but he was not as well-schooled in social cues that pertained to romantic entanglements as he ought to have been. “Drink up, Spock,” Gary added.

Spock saw no reason not to, and so he downed the tequila in his glass in one swallow.

It didn't take long for the tequila Spock had consumed, combined with the fact he hadn’t eaten dinner, to make him lose enough of his inhibitions that he felt he could brave the dance floor again. At any rate, he was grateful to be away from the man Gary and his unwanted attentions.

He insinuated himself, as usual, into the edge of the space, content to remain apart from most people and to keep to himself. As on most nights, patrons danced in pairs or in groups together, the crowd ebbing and flowing about as the music moved them. There was little touching, except when someone wanted to speak to a partner, when the need to be close enough to someone’s ear to be heard necessitated it. 

As he began to move, the present song segued into the next, one that Spock was very familiar with. He closed his eyes and swayed to the first verse’s lyrics, his movement getting more sinuous as the chorus began,

_Hey now, hey now now, sing This Corrosion to me_

He raised his arms, his entire body rolling in time with the beat. He glanced to his right and there he saw him… that blue-eyed young man he had noticed several weeks before, the one whose own dancing had so spoken to Spock’s own mood. He seemed to be alone, though he would sidle up to dance with multiple other groups on the dance floor, women and men alike, who seemed not to mind the addition of another person to their parties. Indeed, as happened most nights, Spock’s fellow dancers were a friendly and gregarious bunch; it was not uncommon for groups of people to form and then fall apart as a song went on.

Presently, the blue-eyed man came to be near to Spock and, as Spock turned, he was suddenly very much in his personal space. He smiled, his lips plush and pink, the tip of his tongue darting out to moisten them. He changed his movements to mirror Spock’s and soon they were dancing in concert, the young man’s eyes meeting Spock’s as they moved in time.

A minute later, the song changed to a more up-tempo one that everyone on the floor was familiar with, because most of them whooped their approval as the first notes played. 

_You're so gorgeous I'll do anything_  
I'll kiss you from your feet  
To where your head begins  
You're so perfect you're so right as rain  
You make me make make me   
Make me hungry again

As they danced, the young man moved closer and closer to Spock, a development Spock did not object to. He had now seen the young man many times over the last weeks, usually dancing as he had done this evening – with everyone and no one at once. Spock found him beautiful and fascinating, and unconsciously looked for him whenever he came to the club. They would nod to each other on occasion, but had had no other contact. In fact, given that he seemed open to dancing with anyone, the fact the young man had never tried to dance with Spock until tonight was strange. 

But Spock was not complaining.

The young blond got even closer, his pelvis pitched forward as he moved, and then suddenly his wrist was resting loosely on Spock’s shoulder, his hand dangling from the end of it. The closer he got, the more they touched, first their knees brushing, then their thighs, until their groins were each pressed against the other’s hip. Spock felt suddenly turned on by the closeness, by the scent of clean sweat and clove cigarette smoke wafting off the man before him, could feel his own penis harden in his pants, making them feel tighter than they were. Emboldened, he reached up and rested his left hand on the other man’s waist. As they danced, their bodies got closer and closer until their chests brushed occasionally.

_Everything you do is simply dreamy_  
Everything you do is quite delicious  
Why can't I be you?  
Why can't I be you?  
Why can't I be you? 

The song ended and Spock found himself feeling awkward suddenly in the few seconds of silence. The young man leaned forward with his lips parted and Spock froze. He did not know what would come next, his heart was beating a a tattoo on his ribcage. Spock had never kissed a man before, had never given thought to the circumstances of how it might happen, and he did not want to disappoint.

The young man’s intent was soon clear however as, instead of the expected kiss, his lips found their way to a spot beside Spock’s ear. 

“Thanks for the dance,” he said, his breath cool against Spock’s ear, ruffling the short hairs there.

Spock shivered and opened his mouth to reply, but the young man spun away and disappeared into the crowd once more, too quickly for Spock to track him.

Disappointed, left the dance floor. Not wanting to leave, however, he returned to the back bar, where the patrons were lined up three-deep. Spock was beginning to feel like he should leave – he disliked being jostled by people – when a voice called his name.

“Spock!” 

He looked over to see that Gary had not moved from his seat at the corner of the bar and was beckoning Spock to join him. Thirsty, overheated, and frustrated by having lost track of the blond man he’d have to now admit to crushing on the last several weeks, Spock let himself be drawn in. 

“Here, get in here,” Gary said, indicating the space beside him; it was somewhat sheltered from the crowd by the fact there was an occupied bar stool situated not far away. 

Spock slid into the space, grateful for the respite from the pressing crowd. “Thank you.”

“Having a good time?”

Spock nodded. “Indeed, I find the release of dancing to be most enjoyable.”

“Good for you. I can tell you enjoy yourself. Where’d you learn to dance like that?”

“Nowhere, really. Although my friend Gaila is a professional dancer, so perhaps I have learned a few moves from watching her. She is most talented.”

“You don’t say – what kind of dancer is she? Stripper?”

Spock frowned. “Jazz, I believe – she is hoping to parlay her training into a role in a Broadway musical some day.”

Gary made an impressed face. “Has she had much luck?”

“I do not think so; she spends most evenings waiting tables at a restaurant in Little Italy.”

Gary raised his eyebrows and asked a few more questions, which Spock, surprisingly, answered. He was usually much more reticent, but his inhibitions were lowered due to the alcohol he’d consumed, and he found he did not care.

“You look thirsty – here,” Gary said, placing a glass in his hand. 

Spock looked down at it, surprised. He had not asked for anything, and he did not notice Gary ordering anything. “I – thank you.”

“I wouldn’t trust this guy if I were you,” said a wry voice suddenly.

Both Spock and Gary looked over to Gary’s right to see the very young man that Spock had danced with earlier. 

“Fuck you, Jimmy!” Gary laughed, elbowing the young man in the chest playfully. Spock thought that Jimmy did not look like he returned the good humor.

“Yeah, you’d like to, wouldn’t you?” He looked over at Spock. “You know, you can’t trust this guy, right?” he asked.

“I do not know that,” Spock said. 

Gary looked pleased at that, but Spock was merely stating the truth, not defending him. He opened his mouth to correct the impression, but Gary interrupted, “See, _some_ one likes me, Jimmy.”

“He just doesn’t know you yet. I mean what I say, man,” Jimmy said to Spock before disappearing back into the crowd.

“He does not like you very much,” Spock pointed out.

“He’s just jealous,” Gary said with an oily smile.

“Of what?” Spock took a sip of the drink he held, mostly because it was ice cold and dripping – it was a gin and tonic, the lime in it very refreshing on his palate and he drank half of it gratefully. He didn't necessarily want more alcohol, but he didn't think three drinks over the course of the evening were all that excessive. When he finished it, he asked for a sparkling water and was given what he wished, so he thought no more of it.

Half an hour later, Spock realized he needed to use the bathroom and told Gary so. By now, he’d taken a seat on a nearby bar stool that had freed up fifteen minutes earlier, and when he slid to the floor, he felt his legs buckle as a wave of dizziness overcame him. 

“Hey, are you OK?” Gary asked, catching him by the arm.

Spock looked up at him and suddenly his vision seemed to go sideways. “I – am quite dizzy suddenly.”

“Just how much did you drink?” Gary asked.

“What?” Spock asked, trying unsuccessfully to focus on Gary’s face. It seemed to waver before his eyes, though that might have been the strobe lighting. _Not very much,_ he thought, but when he tried to speak again, his tongue and lips felt thick and ungainly. 

Gary’s grip on his arm tightened, Spock saw, but he couldn’t quite feel it. When Spock looked at him, his lips were moving but Spock could not hear him. 

He felt strangely disconnected from his own body. When he next looked around, he found he was moving through the entryway of the club, past the small booth where the coat check was – he felt a vague worry about his sweater, which he had checked tonight; he would not like to lose it. He turned his head to tell Gary this, and realized they were no longer near the coat check but out on the street. His back was cold, he thought, and rough. No, it wasn’t his back but the structure he was currently leaning against. He shook his head, trying to clear it. Was he leaning against a brick wall?

He suddenly realized that he could feel the warm, moist puff of Gary’s breath on his neck as well as the insistent pull of a hand on his belt. All at once, he was very disturbed by this situation – he did not wish to be outside, he did not wish to leave his sweater behind, _he did not want anyone touching him_ , but he could not voice the objection. 

When next he looked up, he was sitting on the ground, and Gary was no longer there. That was not accurate – Gary was nearby, and he was talking to someone else – Jimmy. They weren’t so much talking as apparently shouting at each other, though again, Spock could not quite process the sounds that were falling on his ears.

The last thing he remembered was someone pulling his wallet from his back pocket.

\----

Spock woke in his own bed to the dim light and soothing sounds of a steady rain shower just outside his window. He was lying on his side, ensconced in his duvet, staring at the wall. He had no recollection of how he’d gotten home, nor of putting himself to bed. 

This realization ought to have disturbed him more than it did, but he was more concerned by the throbbing in his skull and the fact that someone seemed to have packed his mouth full of cotton. He opened his mouth and soon realized that was not the case, but the dryness of his mouth was so acute he soon began to cough and choke.

“You’re awake?” said a voice from the doorway.

Spock froze; he had not considered that he would not be alone. What alarmed him more was that the voice was male. He turned over with some difficulty; his body ached all over and he apparently had a large abrasion running up the entirety of his right forearm. He turned his head to see who had spoken and was surprised to see that it belonged to Jimmy, the young man he had danced with the night before. Spock had no answer for him, as he continued to splutter and cough. Jumping into action, Jimmy ran from the room and soon returned with a large glass of cold water.

Spock pushed himself up in the bed – and was that relief he felt to find that he was still fully clothed? – and gratefully accepted the water, drinking half of it all at once. 

“All better?” Jimmy asked.

“No,” Spock replied, his voice a raspy croak. He had another sip of water and tried to clear his throat.

“Yeah, well, I did warn you not to take a drink from that asshole Gary,” he pointed out.

“I underestimated the degree of my intoxication.”

“You were slipped a Mickey – don’t be so hard on yourself, Spocko.”

“Please do not call me that.”

“Sorry. That’s a weird name, though, you have to admit.”

“It is a family name,” Spock replied automatically; he was used to being asked this question. “May I ask what you are doing here, Jimmy?”

“Please don’t call _me_ that. It’s Jim – just Jim. Anyway, someone had to get you home safely.”

“From _The Enterprise_? Was I in danger, then?” Spock’s mind was unusually clouded, and even the memories he had were as fleeting as dreams. 

“Oh boy, did those drugs do a number on you. It’s a good thing I was there; you’re not the first person to fall for that fink’s dirty tricks.”

“I – I cannot believe I could have been so stupid,” Spock replied, his voice breaking. He felt a finger of unease and disquiet curling in his belly; this was not the first time his relative naiveté and lack of knowledge of social norms had gotten him into serious trouble. His upbringing had been a sheltered one; a certified genius by the age of six, he had largely been home schooled by his parents and so had not enjoyed the socialization among his peers that other children received. He graduated high school at 15, university at 18, and had his masters from Stanford before his 20th birthday. Despite all of this advanced learning, his sheltered childhood had not afforded him the usual mix of experiences he suspected Jim had been exposed to. 

Another time this deficiency had made itself apparent was during his first week as a TA at Stanford, when he had mistaken the friendly curiosity of a student as flirtatiousness. He told her in no uncertain terms that not only was he not interested in pursuing a sexual relationship with her but he quoted chapter and verse of the university’s code of conduct to her on the matter, both from a student and a teacher’s point of view. Luckily the young lady – Nyota – had not held his overreaction against him and they had become quite close friends over the ensuing years. 

But that experience was not nearly as upsetting as the possibility of missing some tell or other indicator that he had been in real, physical danger. He had been drugged and nearly assaulted – and he had had no suspicions that it would or even could happen. How gullible he had been, how unprepared and ignorant. He closed his eyes as he recalled all of his parents’ warnings against coming to New York in the first place – they’d been right all along, he was not prepared for this, he could not – 

“Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself,” Jim said kindly, interrupting his thoughts. “You did nothing wrong. Guys like Gary – they’re really good at manipulating people. Lots of people.” Jim’s blue eyes clouded for a moment and Spock was momentarily overwhelmed by a feeling of sympathy for what was clearly a personal revelation; he forgot his own chagrin for a moment.

Spock looked down at his hands. “Still, compared to many of my peers, my social experiences are lacking.”

“I don’t know that that makes you any less interesting,” Jim said, his cheeks immediately coloring. “Anyway, you’re safe now, and there’s nothing to worry about.”

Spock nodded and then glanced at his bedside clock; it was 10:34 am. “Is that the time? I will be late for my 11:00 class!” He pushed the duvet off of himself and got out of the bed, but when he stood, he was suddenly dizzy. He swayed on his feet and would have fallen had Jim not taken hold of his arm.

“Whoa, hold on there, I don’t think you should go anywhere in your shape. Anyway – I’m sure your teacher will allow you one sick day.”

“I am the instructor,” Spock said with a weakened voice. He allowed Jim to ease him back against his pillows; once he was lying down, he began to feel better.

Jim raised his eyebrows, impressed. “Really? Well, Professor Spock, it looks like your class gets a momentary reprieve from schoolwork.”

Spock frowned; he was going to have to call Doctor Pike immediately to make his excuses. When he felt well enough to sit upright again.

\----

“Here we are – breakfast!” Jim said, carrying a tray into Spock’s bedroom. 

Spock pushed himself up and lolled against the headboard of his bed. “It is 12:15,” he pointed out.

“It’s still the first meal of the day, so it’s important,” Jim said reasonably. He set the tray down on the end of the bed as Spock pushed himself upright once more. 

Spock eyed the tray, filled with scrambled eggs, toast, and a pot of tea, dubiously. The eggs were simply and perfectly soft-cooked, as he liked them he was happy to note – but he did not like the chances of his roiling stomach accepting them very readily. His attempts at dressing and using the bathroom earlier had ended in a bout of dry heaves, though at least he had managed to get those damn leather pants off of himself. “Perhaps just a piece of toast,” he said. “And a cup of tea?”

“Whatever you like.” Jim moved the tray next to Spock’s leg and poured the tea. “I made it with lemon ‘cuz that’ll set in your stomach better. Or at least that’s what my Gran used to say.” 

Spock lifted the cup to his face and breathed in the fragrant steam – he did indeed prefer tea with lemon to milk, and found it interesting that Jim did as well. “You should have some of the eggs, before they get cold.”

A strange expression crossed Jim’s face for a split second, one of longing Spock thought, but then it was gone. “You sure?”

“You have prepared them – you are as entitled to them as I.”

Jim shrugged and tucked in, also finishing the toast when Spock could only manage one piece.

“Thank you for looking after me, and for preparing food as well. I am unsure that I would have been able to fend for myself today.” Spock knew he ought to say something more about his gratitude for Jim’s intervention the day before, he but the words were proving difficult.

Jim merely smiled. “I like taking care of people,” he said in the manner of a man confessing something, and then cleared the tray away.

\----

“Oh, hey, look who’s up!” Jim smiled happily at Spock as he entered the living area of his tiny apartment, putting down the book he’d been reading. It was close to 4:00 pm and, after a nap following his breakfast, Spock had forced himself out of bed to shower.

“Yes, well, I am unsure how long it will last,” he replied unsteadily. 

Jim moved to the far side of the couch so that Spock wouldn’t have to walk as far. “Any progress is progress.”

Spock sank gratefully into the couch; his head, thankfully, was no longer spinning quite as much as before, and he felt marginally better. “What is that aroma?”

Jim looked uneasy suddenly. “It’s soup, for you.”

Spock was nonplussed. “No one except my mother has made me soup, to my memory.”

“I was thinking you wouldn’t mind having something good and hot to eat when you felt better. I hope you don’t mind, but I borrowed a few bucks from your wallet to buy the ingredients.”

Spock waved his hand. “I would not have expected you to pay for the groceries, regardless. What sort of soup is it?” Spock found the rich aromas suffusing the apartment to be quite pleasant.

“Just some basic vegetable soup, nothing too fancy.”

“You know how to cook?”

“I know how to do a lot of things.”

“Including spot a treacherous individual. I do not believe I have thanked you properly for looking after me last night, Jim. It was the kindest thing anyone has done for me in some time.”

“No one deserves what Gary did to you, Spock – I was just doing a duty, you know?” 

Spock saw the sincerity in his face and nodded, then dropped the subject. “What is it you are reading?” Jim held the cover up for Spock to see. “The Dialogues of Plato?”

Jim shrugged. “I’m told it’s required reading.”

Spock nodded, wondering which university Jim attended in the city, though he didn't ask. 

“What’s all this equipment and stuff? Computers?” Jim asked, rising and going over to Spock’s worktable that sat on the other side of the room. On it was Spock’s latest project, his tools and components and circuit boards still strewn haphazardly where he had left them the day before prior to his leaving for his fateful night at the club. Jim bent over the desk to get a closer look.

“A hobby of mine. I find electronic design and engineering to be fascinating.”

“What’s it all for?” Jim raised a hand tentatively towards the materials and then lowered it.

“It is supposed to increase the capacity of cellular networks to process calls digitally rather than by analog means, thus reducing the cost per user of the networks themselves.”

Jim quirked a smile and repeated, “What’s it all for?”

“It means that the cost to own a cellular phone – you might call it a ‘car phone’ – would be reduced while the capacity of the broadcast spectrum is increased, making mobile telecommunications more affordable.”

“Sounds complicated.”

“Even more complicated when it works,” Spock replied ruefully; he had been frustrated of late with a total lack of progress, not made easier by the weekly diatribe delivered by his father.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“If I knew that, then it would work.”

Jim laughed at the joke, the expression utterly transforming his already handsome face into something nearly angelic. The effect – crinkling, sparkling blue eyes, white teeth in a broad grin – did things to Spock that included warming his heart, his face, and perhaps other areas. He was forced to look away for a moment so that he could school his own expression. 

“So I guess you go to school around here?”

“Columbia, though I am from California originally.”

“Sunny California? Sounds cool.”

“It has its attractions.”

“I’m just from some Podunk town in Iowa – nowhere you’ve heard of.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

“Riverside? You heard of it?”

“I confess I have not,” Spock admitted, disappointed in himself and resolving to look it up the next opportunity he got. It earned him another laugh, however.

“That’s OK, no one really has. It’s pretty nice in summer, though – I used to go swimming.” 

“But you no longer do?”

Jim’s eyes shuttered. “No. No, I don’t get back there much anymore.”

Spock knew better than to pursue the topic.

“What’s this?” Jim had moved his exploration of Spock’s tiny apartment on to the bookshelves that had been built into one of the walls. He picked up the brass medal that had been inlaid into a wooden plaque.

“That is the Zephram Cochrane Medal for Applied Engineering,” Spock said, instinctively trying to keep the pride out of his voice. _Pride is illogical and unbecoming, Spock. Do try to control yourself._ Sarek’s voice in his head said.

Jim whistled low. “Sounds important.”

“It is. At 19, I was its youngest recipient.”

“I guess you’re really smart huh?”

“Intelligence is relative. I do not think I would have the wherewithal to absorb such heady content as the works of Plato, for example.”

Jim’s smile returned and he wandered back over to the couch. He rested his knee between Spock’s. “Don’t sell yourself short, I’ll bet you totally would.”

Spock gazed up into the cerulean depths of Jim’s eyes as the other man’s tongue flicked out to wet his lips. Spock unconsciously mirrored the gesture and he cleared his throat as he angled his head back against the couch cushions. Jim leaned forward slightly, his eyelids lowered, the light from the setting sun casting shadows from his lashes across his cheeks. Spock parted his own lips. 

“So what’s that,” Jim asked, tearing his gaze away and turning his attention to the framed photo on the wall above Spock’s head, “photo of your folks?”

\----

“This soup is delicious,” Spock said, embarrassed to sound so surprised. 

Jim shrugged. “My Gran taught me a few things. You really like it? I think it could use some hot sauce, but I didn't see any in your fridge. I didn't see much of anything in your fridge – you live like a hermit or something.”

“I eat most of my meals on campus. I take it you do not?”

“I mostly eat out lately,” Jim said, looking down at his spoon. 

“Ah,” Spock said, nodding – he well understood the life of an undergrad, when one ate what one could get your one’s on sometimes, making the “freshman 15” a very real thing. It did not appear to be an issue for Jim. At any rate, he could not have been a college freshman if he was getting into a dance club such as _The Enterprise_ that served alcohol. 

“So, I’ve been seeing you around a lot lately, at _The Enterprise_ ,” Jim went on. “You been going there long?”

“Only since my last birthday in October. My friend Nyota had to force me to go, but I found I rather enjoyed the music and dancing aspects of the experience and so have become a regular patron. I expect I will have to curtail my attendance should my studies require more of my time, but for now I enjoy going.”

“What do you like the best about it?”

Spock thought it through, considering his reply. “The music itself. Or rather I should say the lyrics of the songs. I had not had much opportunity to listen to popular music as a child – it was deemed frivolous and illogical – but as I am exposed to the works of these artists more and more, I find it to be quite the opposite. It is exactly like poetry, is it not? I find that the lyrics speak to me on many levels.”

“And it can be like an escape too, you know?” Jim leaned forward in his seat, suddenly avid; as he did, his legs shifted under Spock’s tiny kitchen table, and his foot brushed Spock’s bare ankle and stayed there. “Just like books, in a way, music can transport you places, places that the musician means to take you. And I can’t help but want them to. And when they fit, when they speak to you, it’s the best thing ever.”

“I understand what you mean, though I have not had the opportunity to experience that firsthand.”

“No? Don’t you have a stereo or anything?”

“I have not found a need for one before, nor have I amassed any kind of music collection at all. Such things were deemed illogical when I was a child.”

“By who?”

“My father. He had… very particular ideas about how I should occupy my free time.”

“One of those, huh?”

Spock sighed; he did not relish discussing his father with anyone as it made him tense. “Indeed.”

“You know, there comes a time when you just have to live your life,” Jim said soberly.

Spock blinked at him, shocked by the plainness and truth in the statement, but then Jim kept talking and the spell was broken.

“So anyway, I’ll just have to teach you everything I know about music, then. There’s more out there than what you’re hearing in the club – loads more! Here…” He rose from the table and went over to the door, where Spock noticed he’d left an old US Army knapsack leaning against the wall. He picked it up and returned to the table, rifling through its contents. “Oh, before I forget –“ he pulled out a bulky garment, and Spock was relieved to see it was the hand knit sweater he thought he’d left at the club.

“Thank you,” he said, unbelievably touched. 

“You can thank your dry cleaner if he can get the stains out – I kind of dropped it in a puddle.” Returning to the contents of his bag, Jim pulled out an electronic device that Spock recognized as a Walkman. “Let’s see…” Jim pressed a button that opened the thing, took out the cassette tape nestled within to peer at the title. “Not my favorite mix, but there are some good songs on this one.”

“What is it?”

“A mixtape. I asked one of the DJs at the club to make one for me. I think you’ll like it – it’s a lot of the stuff that they play there.” He slid the tape back into its housing, then pressed another button to rewind it. “We could listen to it together, if you like.”

“I would like that very much.”

Jim insisted on cleaning up the mess from his cooking, despite Spock’s protests that he be allowed to help (“You may _think_ you feel better, but trust me, you don’t.”). Spock instead returned to the couch and waited.

Eventually, Jim came into the room with the Walkman in his hands. He sat beside Spock on the couch – close enough that Spock could feel the heat from his thigh, but not close enough to touch. Spock felt dizzy again, but he didn't think it had anything to do with being ill. He swallowed and turned to face Jim. 

“OK, I think start with Side 2.” Jim leaned forward with the headphones in hand, placing them over Spock’s head. “Here let me…” He gently pushed the hair that had grown over Spock’s ears out of the way so that it would not obscure his hearing. “Huh, weird,” he said.

“What?” Spock asked, alarmed more by Jim’s closeness than anything he might say.

“Your ears – they’re almost pointed.”

“Ah, yes, many people find it odd. It is an inherited trait – my father also has a slight point to his ears, though it is less pronounced than mine.”

“And the eyebrows?”

Spock shrugged. “They have never grown properly.”

“I think they’re cute,” Jim said, touching the shell of Spock’s ear with a fingertip. Spock shivered as Jim sat back, then flinched as Jim pressed the Play button and the music began.

“Too loud? Sorry!” Jim said as Spock scrambled to reduce the volume.

The song that began was as up-tempo as the ones that Spock preferred, but it was somehow different in that there was a tone to the minor guitar chords that made his heart rise and race even as the bass line made him nod his head up and down to keep time. And then the lyrics started, the singer’s voice nearly swamped by the music, but their meaning no less understood.

_When routine bites hard,_  
And ambitions are low,  
And resentment rides high,  
But emotions won't grow,  
And we're changing our ways,  
Taking different roads. __

Spock closed his eyes as the chorus began, 

_Then love, love will tear us apart again.  
Love, love will tear us apart again._

He opened his eyes and looked up at Jim as the song faded out, eyes wide. 

“Good, yeah?” Jim asked with a knowing smile. Spock had no words as he looked into Jim’s eyes while the next song began. This one had a similar sound to it, though the recording was less muddy, the instruments more clear, and a man’s voice singing nonsense sounds in time with the music until the lyrics began.

_Oh, you've got green eyes_  
Oh, you've got blue eyes  
Oh, you've got grey eyes  
And I've never seen anyone quite like you before  
No, I've never met anyone quite like you before 

Spock wanted more than anything to parrot these words back to Jim, but he kept his lips closed. Jim stared back at him, an excited look on his face. He grinned and scooted closer to Spock on the couch. Leaning over so that his head was practically on Spock’s shoulder, he removed one of the headphones from Spock’s ear so that he could listen in. 

“I love this song the best,” he murmured, and Spock could feel his breath, warm across his jaw.

The song went on, and Jim began to sing along with it,

_Up, down, turn around_  
Please don't let me hit the ground  
Tonight I think I'll walk alone  
I'll find my soul as I go home 

“Have you found your soul yet?” Jim asked, his voice hushed.

Spock turned his head to look at Jim, sitting so close to him, so close he could feel the heat of his body. The song went on,

_Oh, you’ve got green eyes_  
Oh, you’ve got blue eyes  
Oh, you’ve got grey eyes 

Jim’s eyes were not so ambiguous – they were decidedly blue – but Spock still found these lyrics strongly evocative of them.

“I believe I have not been looking for it,” Spock replied.

Jim’s lips were parted, wet with saliva, but this close up, Spock could see that they were chapped, the skin dry and reddened around the very edges. He bit his lower lip, alert to Spock’s scrutiny. Without thinking, Spock reached up and placed the first two fingers of his left hand on them. They were impossibly soft. 

Jim’s breath hitched at the contact and Spock’s eyes snapped up to look into Jim’s. The moment between them was charged as if with electricity. One of them – Spock couldn’t say which – made a small, needful whimpering sound, and then they were kissing, their arms around each other as their mouths joined with a passion and a fervor that more than made up for Spock’s perception of his lack of experience.

Aside from family members, Spock had only ever kissed one other person in his entire life. Tori-Priscilla Ng – T’Pring to her friends – was the daughter of a close friend of Spock’s parents, and the two had been encouraged to go on a date once when Spock was 15. It had not gone at all well – they had exactly nothing in common and it seemed to Spock that T’Pring actively despised him – but at the end of the night, she demanded that he kiss her. The kiss was perfunctory and passionless, and he thought at the time that if he never kissed another person he might not mind it overmuch. But that was before he realized he preferred men, and also that to kiss someone one had no feelings for was never a good idea. 

He had many feelings for Jim, and even more questions about why he found he could trust the young man so completely after only knowing him what amounted to a day, but none of these were big enough issues to prevent Spock from continuing to kiss him. Soundly.

Though soft, Jim’s lips were demanding on his – insistent – and Spock found himself submitting willingly to it, opening his mouth to Jim’s seeking tongue. He leaned back against the end of the couch and Jim followed, raising a hand to brush the headphones off of Spock’s head, his thumb lightly stroking along Spock’s stubbled jaw. Spock panted for breath as Jim’s kisses traveled along his jaw and down his throat, moaning as he nipped him lightly, his body surging upward almost of its own volition. 

Jim made a disappointed noise then, and pulled away. “Oh no, no, no – let’s not get you too hot and bothered, Spock. You’re still not 100%.”

“I find that 80% is adequate for many of my students,” Spock pointed out, and Jim laughed.

“Funny. But none of your students was drugged by unknown substances. How about we just calm it down a bit? Is that a chess set I see over there on the bookshelf?”

\----

They played two games of chess – the first one Spock won, and the second one ended in a draw, but Jim very nearly won. Spock tried not to appear too impressed, but he was secretly pleased that the young man could compete with him on his level – so few people could.

When Spock started yawning uncontrollably at about 11:30, Jim insisted he go to sleep. The bedclothes were still rumpled from the night before, but Jim smoothed them out as well as he could and then encouraged Spock to get in.

“Come on, get in there, I want to tuck you in.”

Spock looked at him sideling. “I am perfectly capable of putting myself to bed, Jim.”

“Yeah, but isn’t it nice to have someone to make sure you’re all comfy-cozy?”

Spock had no opinion either way, but it seemed to please Jim, and he was amenable to that arrangement. He pulled the covers up and made sure Spock was fully covered, sitting down beside him on the edge of the bed and fussing with the arrangement of the flat sheet and the duvet. Spock watched his concentration, and when Jim looked at him, their eyes locking, the young man smiled sheepishly.

“Is this the point where you will tell me a bedtime story?” Spock chided gently.

“No, but if you’re really nice to me, I’ll give you a good night kiss.”

Spock pulled his arm out from beneath the covers and rested his hand on Jim’s knee. “Thank you, once again, for taking care of me today, Jim. I am in your debt.”

Jim’s eyes went soft as he smiled at Spock. “It was my pleasure, Spock,” he said. He leaned forward and Spock tilted his chin up, expecting a kiss on his mouth, but instead Jim’s lips landed on Spock’s forehead. Spock closed his eyes and reveled in their softness – it had been some years since he’d had anyone touch him with such caring. He wasn’t sure why, exactly, but by the time he was seven, his mother had ceased to show him much physical affection of any kind. He suspected it had something to do with his father’s attitudes towards child rearing, and his theories that logic could prevail in all things, but Spock could recall many a night when his mother’s soothing presence might have mitigated his anxieties or soothed an illness. He couldn’t feel bitter about that now – he never could – but Jim’s attentions today served to remind him, and he reflected that Jim must be a singular individual if he was able to show such compassion to a virtual stranger.

Moved suddenly by this revelation, Spock opened his eyes and gazed into Jim’s eyes. “Stay here with me tonight?” 

“I don’t know if that’s wise. I’ve already spent a night and a day with you – what would the neighbors think?” His words were light and mocking, but his eyes held a sort of hunted expression that Spock could not decipher.

“I do not know my neighbors,” Spock replied. “But it is late and you should not go out on the streets alone – there are dangers out there even a young man should be wary of. I would worry for you if you were to leave now.”

Again, the sad, far-away expression crossed Jim’s face and he looked away. “You’d worry about me?”

“Indeed.”

When he looked back at Spock, his smile was as bright as ever. “OK then. Seems a shame for this big, soft bed of yours to have to go to waste, doesn’t it?”

Spock directed him to where he might find something among Spock’s clothes to wear to sleep in, and after a brief time in the bathroom, Jim joined him in his bed. They lay on their backs, side by side, not touching. It felt awkward to Spock, after their previous closeness when they were kissing, but he did not know quite what to do about it. His thoughts came to a crashing halt as Jim reached over and slid his hand inside Spock’s lax palm and held onto it loosely. His hand was warm and dry, a bit rough and perhaps callused if Spock would just tighten his own hold on it to feel, but he did not. He did not know what to do about it, he did not know what to say about it; the only thing he knew was that he liked it. 

He fell asleep not long after, the warm weight of Jim’s hand in his own feeling like an anchor he never knew he needed.

\----

Spock woke the next morning feeling over-warm. He was lying on his left side with Jim curled up into a ball, facing him, his hands gripping Spock’s pajama top loosely and his face nestled against Spock’s chest. With the duvet covering the both of them, the addition of Jim’s body heat in his bed made it feel like a furnace under there. Spock reflected that he had rarely felt warm enough in his own bed, not since the autumn weather had turned chilly, and he reveled for a moment in it even as he studied the sleeping face beside him.

Jim’s face was unlined and expressionless in sleep, making him appear very young and innocent. His hair was golden in the morning sunshine, the color of the raisins his mother favored in her oatmeal, and it had that slightly sticky and matted quality that came from too much styling product and infrequent washing. His lashes were long and parti-colored, darker at the roots with blond streaks at mid-shaft. His lips were parted as he slept, and Spock had an urge to kiss them and imagined doing just that for several minutes, until Jim finally stirred.

“Oh,” Jim said, realizing where he was when he was awake. He released his grip on Spock’s pajamas and looked up at him, pulling away. “Sorry.”

“Do not be.”

Jim smiled but pulled away anyway, and stretched. “What time is it?”

Spock looked at the bedside clock. “7:15.”

“Do you need to go soon?”

“I have a class at 8:55, though given that I missed yesterday, I ought to get in early and catch up on my work.”

“Oh.”

“Do you wish to stay for breakfast? I believe I have cereal.”

“No, I should go too. Mind if I use your shower, though?”

“I do not. There are extra towels in the cupboard in the bathroom.”

Jim slid out from under the covers and closed himself into the bathroom. Spock stayed in the bed until the extra warmth began to fade and then got up, dressing quietly and going into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. He used to think he favored tea – because that was what his father preferred therefore that’s what was usually served at home – but he found he had an affinity for strong black coffee once he came to New York, one no doubt encouraged by Nyota’s preference for it as well.

“Mmm, smells good,” Jim said from behind him.

Spock turned. Jim stood there with his hair still wet, wearing the jeans and boots he had come in and a Columbia t-shirt Spock recognized as one of his own. “Do you mind if I wear this? My other one’s kinda whiffy. I’ll bring it back, I swear.”

Spock had no fondness for the article of clothing and told Jim so. “How do you take your coffee?”

As it turned out, Jim’s coffee preference seemed to involve more milk and sugar than actual coffee, and the two of them sat down moments later at Spock’s tiny table with matching bowls of Cheerios and steaming mugs. 

They talked about the class Spock would be teaching that morning as well as more about Spock’s research, then segued to talk of the literature Jim preferred to read: “Anything I can get my hands on, really,” before agreeing to meet at _The Enterprise_ on Wednesday night, when Jim’s friend Scotty would be on duty to spin the records. 

“You already know the music he plays, if you’re there on Wednesdays like me, but I want you to meet him – I think he’ll like you.”

“Will I like him?”

“Probably not,” Jim answered with a grin. He stood and they both carried their dishes to the sink. When they turned back around, they were standing too close to each other, their elbows and arms tangled together. Jim unbalanced and fell into Spock, bringing his hands up to catch himself and pressing them to Spock’s ribcage. “Whoops!” he breathed and pulled away, smiling. “I’d better go, then,” he said, gesturing with his head.

“Yes,” Spock said in agreement, though neither of them moved.

“I’ll see you Wednesday. Right?” Jim asked a moment later, and backed out of the kitchen toward the door. Spock followed, stopping just outside the room. Jim bent over to retrieve his ever-present knapsack and the leather jacket that Spock now saw he’d laid on top of it. 

“You can be assured of it.”

Jim smiled then, broad and sunny, and Spock wanted to ask him to stay. “Bye,” he said.

“Goodbye.”

Jim opened the door and turned to go. “Bye,” he repeated, turning and waving. 

Spock nodded and gave him a small smile.

Suddenly, Jim returned to Spock’s side, grabbed a handful of Spock’s button-down shirt and pulled him closer. The kiss was brief but passionate, and before Spock had a chance to decide how to respond, Jim had backed away again. “Bye,” he said from the doorway, and then he was gone.

Spock watched the space where he’d just been standing for more than a minute before closing the door behind him; when he returned to the kitchen, he saw that Jim had left the mix tape they’d listened to the night before next to the sink.


	4. Chapter 4

Jim hated to waste the coins, but it was a long walk back downtown from Spock’s apartment uptown, so he headed for the Subway. At this hour, the station was lousy with morning commuters, and he had to stand for the first half of the journey, but at least he’d caught an express. 

When he emerged on Canal, he headed over to the pharmacy to see if Mr. Sulu needed help with deliveries or anything today. Pav’s illness had severely depleted the College Fund, and Jim needed to earn some extra cash this week. He worked the whole morning, stocking shelves and making a couple of deliveries, and got the added bonus of being present when Mrs. Sulu showed up with her husband’s lunch. He left there at 2:00 with a filled belly and a bag overflowing with pork buns and noodles. (“for your brother, the little one!” Mrs. Sulu had said; Jim had never had the heart to tell her that Pavel and he were not related)

“Honey, I’m home!” he called cheerfully, as usual, but as soon as he neared their little clubhouse, he was immediately accosted by a fury of blue hair and heavy boots as Carol launched herself at him. 

“Hey!” he squeaked, holding her at arm’s length with a hand on each shoulder; unfortunately, she could still use her legs and she landed a kick square in his nuts, dropping him like a stone. “Hey!” he repeated weakly, the wind knocked right out of him. 

“Jim, just where the _hell_ have you been?” she yelled, arms crossed in front of herself and glaring down at him. 

“Out.”

“Out? OUT?!?” she yelled and he thought she might kick him again, so he curled in on himself to protect his belly. “I heard what happened at the club with Gary and I thought – I thought he’d done something to you, you prat!”

“Gary? What’s he gonna do?”

“He’s a drug dealer, Jim, he’d do what they all do. I was expecting to see you dumped in the river or something. Pavel was worried sick!”

“ _Pav_ was worried sick?”

“Just shut up!” she said, stomping her Doc Martens-booted foot and stalking away.

Jim lay where he was for a few moments, waiting for the throbbing to subside in his groin. A shadow fell over his face, and he looked up to see Pav standing over him.

“Were you worried sick?” Jim asked.

Pav shrugged and began picking at a bit of lint on the hem of the oversized sweater he wore. “You are Jim, you are strong.”

Jim smiled widely – sometimes this kid surprised even him. He sat up and handed him the bag he’d been carrying. “Here, extra noodles from Mrs. Sulu.”

Pavel grinned and snatched the bag away, moving over to the couch to open it up. Jim followed. 

“How are you feeling? You look better.” And he did; Pav’s color seemed to have come back, and the fact he was interested in eating was a good sign.

“The new medicine works. Doctor McCoy is miracle worker.”

Jim’s relief nearly choked him. He took a seat beside Pavel and rooted in his bag for his book. 

“But where were you, Jim? Carol has been muttering to herself all morning. I think you really did scare her.”

Jim looked at the chair Carol usually sat in and resolved to go and apologize. “I met someone.”

“Someone nice?”

“I think so.”

“That is good. Someone nice is good, yes?”

Jim smiled and let his fingertips brush against his lips, imagining he could still feel Spock’s stubble there, taste his coffee-flavored breath. “Yes.”

\----

“Hiya Bones!” 

McCoy jumped and hit his head on the shelf above the bit of lab equipment he was monkeying with, cursing a blue streak when he caught sight of who’d startled him. Jim could not have prevented flashing the shit-eating grin at the old grump if he had tried.

“Goddammit, Jim, I’ve got work to do here!”

“Doesn’t look like you’re doing it very well,” Jim observed, taking in the array of spare parts and tools strewn all over the floor around him.

“Doesn’t look meh meh, meh-meh-meh-myeah!” Bones said in a mocking tone.

“Nice vocabulary, Bones. Don’t you have, like, multiple advanced degrees or something?”

Bones gave him a dark look. “This autoclave hasn’t been working right, and the hospital will never spring for a new one, so I need to fix it myself. But I can’t figure it out to save me.”

Jim rolled his eyes. “You want me to try?” Jim had always had an affinity for all things mechanical. 

“Do I look like I know what I’m doing?”

Jim laughed and took off his jacket, waving Bones out of the way as he sat down to take a look. He made a few hemming and hawing sounds before he figured out how the thing ticked, then grabbed a screwdriver and set to work.

“How’s Pavel doing?” Bones asked.

Jim looked up and noticed that he was holding out a can of Coke to him. He took it gratefully and popped the top. “Much better. That medicine really worked.”

“Good. You make sure he gets back in here next Monday for his appointment.”

“If I have to drag him here myself, he’ll make it.” Jim propped his Coke up on the counter and went back to work, finding the problem in a burnt out circuit inside the thing. “There’s your problem, Bones. You need a new one.”

“Ahh Jeez, what’ll it cost me?”

“I dunno, 28 cents at Radio Shack? Slow your roll, man.”

Bones had the grace to look sheepish. “If I give you some money, will you go get it? I’m still on duty, and we could use this thing back online.”

“Sure thing.”

“So how’d you get so good at fixing things?” Bones asked as he reached for his wallet.

“I always used to open up old electronics back on the farm – you know, TVs, radios. When my stepdad Frank bought this old, beat-up ’67 Mustang, he let me play around with it., taught me a few other things. We rebuilt the thing from the carburetor up.”

“That sounds pretty nice.”

“Yeah, except he nearly broke my arm off when I took the thing out for a joy ride a week later. Asshole.”

Bones flinched. “You know it’s still not too late to call the cops on that guy.”

“Suppose not, but I’d have to go back there in order to do it, Bones, and that ain’t happening.” He put his jacket on. “I’ll be back in half an hour, all right?”

“Sure.” Jim was through the door already when he spoke again, “You know Jim, there are programs for kids like you, like your friends. It’s _not all bad_.”

Jim smiled sadly. “You show me one, and I might just go, Bones. But when you’ve had the kind of life I’ve lived – and Pav and Carol and a bunch o’ other kids – you have a hard time trusting what any adult says.”

\----

Bones paid him thirty bucks for the repair – pretty good for a half hour’s work, though Jim wasn’t stupid, he got that Bones felt sorry for him. He also knew how to use that to his advantage – it was something he’d had to learn early on if he was ever going to survive on the streets of this city without falling prey to drug addiction or worse. Then he thought of Gary. “Yeah, worse,” he muttered as he made his way back home. 

He made it an early night and spent the next morning doing all their laundry at the Suds ‘N Go, and by 3:00 found himself with nothing to do, wandering in the general direction of uptown without realizing what he was doing. When he did, he chastised himself for wasting time and spent the cash on a subway token to take him where he needed to go.

“Hey, stranger,” he called to Spock from the bus stop bench around the corner from his building an hour later. Jim had set himself up here, hoping to spot Spock coming home from the university; it hadn’t taken long to be proven right.

Spock looked surprised when he turned around, but when he saw Jim his face lit up with a smile of greeting. The expression transformed his face, changing it from so serious he looked sad to bright and hopeful in less than a second. The transformation warmed Jim to his toes, and he could feel a flutter in his belly.

“Jim, it is unexpected to see you here,” Spock said, taking a step toward him. Jim stood and hoisted his knapsack over his right shoulder; he suddenly didn't know what to do with his hands, so he held onto the strap with both of them. “Unexpectedly pleasurable,” Spock added, as if Jim needed the qualification.

“Really?” Turned out he did. 

“I did not expect to see you until tomorrow night.”

“Well, I was in the neighborhood.”

“It is fortuitous that your studies allow you your afternoons free.”

“Yeah, fortuitous. Oh hey, did you go shopping?” Jim pointed at the plastic bag Spock held.

“I required a personal listening device for the tape you loaned me, so I visited an electronics store. They claim their prices are ‘insane,’ but I merely found them to be competitive.”

Jim grinned and peeked inside the bag at the player Spock had bought – an actual Sony Walkman, not a cheap knockoff like the one Jim had acquired from Hikaru when he’d gotten a new one last Christmas. “You never had one of these before?”

“Negative – my studies are best pursued in quiet, and I never felt the desire to own one of these before you generously shared your music with me.”

“Well, I’m honored I’ve had that effect on you.”

They stared at each other awkwardly for a moment before Spock opened his mouth to speak, though he looked uncertain about what he was about to say. Jim tried to look as encouraging as he could. 

“I know that we are not scheduled to meet until tomorrow evening but –“ he bit his lip. “Would you care to accompany me – I mean, might you find it agreeable to – what I mean to say is do you have any time free this evening? For I would like to take you to dinner.” 

He said it all in such a rush that Jim was a few seconds behind, but he gave him a very enthusiastic, “Sure!” in response.

Spock smiled. “That is splendid.”

“Except for one thing, though,” Jim said, and wanted to kick himself when his choice of words made Spock’s face fall. “It’s a bit early for dinner, don’t you think?”

Spock glanced at his watch. “So it is.”

“We could hang out first if you like.”

“I would like that very much. Where shall we begin?”

“Ever played pinball?”

\----

“I SEE, SO THE AIM IS TO USE THESE BUTTONS TO OPERATE THOSE FLAPPERS IN SUCH A WAY AS TO PREVENT THE METAL BALL FROM FALLING?” Spock was shouting over the din of the arcade, his hands held over his ears.

Jim glanced up at him for a split second before turning his concentration back to the game. “Yes, and you can get extra points whenever the ball hits into those bumper thingies or if it goes into the little traps there, see?” Jim was able to wiggle the machine just so; immediately, the thing lit up and its bells and music intensified. A moment later, the ball was released. 

“THE POINT TOTAL DOES SEEM TO BE INCREASING DRAMATICALLY.”

“That’s the idea,” Jim said with a grin.

Two minutes later, Jim’s ball banked off an upper bumper and ricocheted straight down the middle, disappearing from sight. “Dang! Oh well, there’s two more balls to go. You want a turn, Spock?”

“I do not believe my ears can handle it,” he replied in a lower voice now that the noise from the pinball machine had subsided somewhat. He still looked somewhat pained. 

“That’s OK, maybe Skee Ball is more your speed.”

“That sounds thoroughly unpleasant, Jim.”

\----

“I do not understand how my winnings did not add up to much more than a plastic spider ring suitable for a child and an oversized pencil so ungainly its use is not only impractical, sharpening it would necessitate the use of carpentry tools.” 

They were walking through the park after the arcade, and Spock was finding the economics of the arcade difficult to parse. 

“Well, for one thing, it’s rigged. And for the other, the prizes aren’t the point. The point is to have fun.”

“I see. Then why offer the prizes to begin with?”

Jim shrugged. “Because it’s fun? Did you have fun?”

“I found it diverting enough.”

“I’ll take that as a good thing. Now let’s get some dinner, I’m starving to death.”

They found a pizza parlor not far from Spock’s and ordered at the counter, then took their soft drinks to a nearby booth.

“You didn't really have to pay,” Jim said shyly.

“As a doctoral candidate, I have been granted a small stipend that is more than adequate to provide for my housing and other needs; you being an undergraduate, you must be much more parsimonious. In addition, I was the one who made the invitation, and I am very much enjoying our afternoon date.” Jim watched as Spock’s cheeks colored. “I apologize – that sounded presumptuous of me.”

“I am happy to be presumed on,” Jim said and took a sip of his root beer. “So where are you from?”

“California. My father is a professor of logic at Stanford University, my mother a homemaker. I have lived there all my life.” 

“Except now.”

“Affirmative. My accepting the position here was made in part because of that. I had spent too long cradled within the arms of familiarity.”

“Yeah, plus it was probably nice to get away from your folks.”

“I confess that had something to do with it as well. But the primary motivator was that I wanted leave to pursue my own path, and to have stayed within a university system under the shadow of my father was not the way to accomplish that. I am happy with the choice I made.”

“Are you though? You say you’re studying the same field as your dad, but what about all the electronic gear back at your house?”

“What about it?”

“Well, I mean, you seemed pretty passionate about it, and you yourself said it’s a growing area, why not do that?”

“I am studying logic.” 

Jim thought it interesting that such an obviously smart guy could be this thick. “Forgive me for making an observation here, I mean I barely know you, but why? If you can do what you really love and make a living at it, why are you even wasting your time? How is that logical?”

Spock looked at Jim as if he’d been slapped, and Jim suddenly felt like he’d put his foot into something. He bit his lip uncertainly while Spock thought it through. 

“It would displease my father greatly if I were to change course so abruptly.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” 

Spock’s laugh was like the bark of a trained seal – which was frankly a bit disturbing if Jim was being honest with himself – but he liked seeing him smile. He waved his hand as if dismissing the idea, but if Jim wasn’t mistaken, he looked very thoughtful. 

“How long you been in New York?” Jim asked next, changing the subject.

“Since August of this year.”

“Have a lot of friends?”

“I have work colleagues, as well as Doctor Pike, my doctoral advisor under whom I fulfill a Teaching Assistant function. And then there are Nyota and Gaila, who are my friends.”

“The redhead and the brunette? They’re pretty hot.”

“I have barely noticed.”

“You have got to be kidding.”

Spock fingered the tip of his straw nervously before muttering, “I have a preference for the male form.”

Jim picked up his drink and tapped it against Spock’s. “Me too.” He smiled and took a sip.

Their pizza arrived just then, and Spock ate quietly while Jim prattled on about nothing, just to fill the silence.

\---- 

“Have you always found yourself attracted to males?” Spock asked. They had left the pizza joint and were walking in Riverside Park. Jim noticed Spock didn’t look at him as he spoke.

“Pretty much, since I was a kid.”

“It did not cause you… difficulties?”

“I’m not gonna lie – it totally did,” Jim said with a wry laugh, but he didn’t want to get into it further. It had, in fact, been the primary reason he left Iowa – Frank had beaten him so badly after finding him out in the barn with Kevin Riley that he’d pissed blood for three days. He stole his mother’s wallet and was on the first bus that got him anywhere near New York. He licked his lips. “What about you?”

Spock slowed and then eventually stopped walking, giving his answer some thought. “I… was never much of a sexual person by nature. That is, I felt no affinity with members of the opposite sex for much of my childhood. I had also always been brought up to adhere to certain precepts of the logic studies my father focuses on. He felt – and feels – that logic presents a sort of a template on which to model one’s life. Certain diversions – such as friendships and music and play – were deemed illogical and frivolous, and so I was not allowed to pursue them. When I became a teen, my mother encouraged me to date, but I had no feeling for the girls she introduced me to. I assumed it was because my father’s training had stripped me of the emotions he had always said were illogical, but I was mistaken. As it turned out, I am a homosexual.”

As he spoke, Spock stared at a point somewhere in front of Jim’s shoulder, but as he drew breath before continuing, he seemed uneasy, as if he was afraid of Jim’s reaction. “It was a realization that only occurred to me within the last year. In fact, if Nyota had not asked me the question outright, I am unsure I would have had it. Fascinating, is it not, how obtuse one can be when it comes to one’s own life?” When he finally looked up at Jim, his dark eyes were melancholy and he seemed cowed, as if admitting all this cost him something.

Jim didn't respond right away – Spock’s description of his childhood sounded smothering and bleak. Jim felt that, as miserable as his life had been in Iowa, at least he always had options: he could hang with friends until the heat was off, he could camp in the woods on the edge of town, he could leave. He knew how to take care of himself, and others. But it didn’t seem to him that Spock ever saw that as an option and it made Jim feel bad for him, made him want to take care of Spock just like he took care of Pav and Carol. 

Spock’s needs, however, weren’t as black and white as food and shelter and healthcare. They were emotional, and stemmed from a history of, from what Jim had just heard, never quite getting the support or love he craved. Impulsively, Jim threw his arms around Spock’s neck and kissed him.

Surprised, Spock didn’t respond at first, but he recovered quickly. Heartened, Jim licked at the seam of his mouth, and Spock parted his lips with a small, desperate sigh that went straight to Jim’s groin. Jim tightened his arms around Spock, their chests pressing together tightly. He could feel it then: Spock’s entire body was trembling. Jim pulled back, looking up at Spock, who once more let out that needful sigh, and when he looked at Jim, the expression on his face showed such desperate need that it nearly undid him. “Spock?”

Spock did not respond; instead he lowered his head to take Jim’s lower lip between his own and sucked on it desperately. His hands came up, and he placed one on either side of Jim’s face, as if he didn’t want to let Jim go. Jim didn’t want him to either, but he also knew that two guys standing in the middle of a well-lit path in the park making out was not the smartest thing to do, even if they were in New York City. Luckily, an approaching pair of joggers made his point for him and the two of them parted, looking at each other with naked desire and panting as they waited for the two women to pass.

“We should – “ Jim began.

“That would be prudent –“ Spock replied.

“So your place is really close…”

“That is a logical suggestion.”

\----

It took a Herculean amount of restraint for Jim not to beat Spock’s door down in his frustration to get him inside, and he was quite proud of himself that he did not have to resort to any physical violence. But he was no saint – no sooner did the door close than Jim had Spock pressed against it, arms around his back and practically chewing his lips off. Spock’s hands rested around Jim’s back, one of them traveling upwards so his fingers could toy with the short hairs on Jim's neck, making Jim shudder. “Oh God, do just that,” he breathed before diving back in, teasing Spock’s tongue with his own in hopes of coaxing it out to play. Eventually Spock took the hint and their kiss became a near fight for dominance before Jim let Spock have his way and Spock was licking at the inside of Jim’s mouth.

Jim let his hands run all over Spock’s body; he was still wearing his jacket and sweater, but Jim knew more or less what was going on underneath after their make out session the day before. Spock’s torso was long and leanly muscled, his shoulders wide and strong, but Jim wanted visuals. He pushed Spock’s jacket from his shoulders as they kissed, let it drop to the floor with a muffled thud. Next Jim ran his hands over Spock’s sides, thrilling at the feel of his ribs under the heavy wool, his intent to ease his hands underneath, to finally get to feel what his skin was like. Jim ran his fingertips over the flesh at Spock’s waist.

“Oh!” Spock said, jumping slightly and breaking their kiss.

“Sorry – are my hands too cold?”

Spock gave him a shy smile. “Yes.”

“Should we move this to the couch?” Jim suggested. He took Spock’s wrist in his hand, intending to lead him, but Spock turned and went to sit down without preamble. Jim smiled – Spock was certainly unpredictable and more than a little strange – he liked that.

Jim took a seat close to Spock, their legs touching along their lengths. Turning at the waist, he put a hand on Spock’s thigh, then cocked his head to the side as Spock turned his head to look at him, an invitation in his eyes. “Well?” Jim said.

“Yes?”

“We going to continue or…”

“Oh. Yes, please.”

Smiling at the momentary consternation on Spock’s face, Jim leaned in and kissed him again. it wasn’t long before they got back to their prior level of passion, and Jim soon had Spock leaning back against the corner of the couch again, only this time if felt like Spock was a more active participant than the night before when, Jim presumed, he was less enthusiastic because he had been ill. Taking that as encouragement, Jim pushed himself up and over Spock so that he was lying more or less on top of him, straddling his hips with his hands on his face as he kissed him all over. 

“Mmm, you taste so good,” Jim murmured.

“Perhaps it is… the pizza sauce,” Spock panted.

Jim smiled in response and leaned in, trailing kisses along Spock’s jaw toward his ear. “Nope, no pizza back here,” he replied in a low voice. He took Spock’s earlobe between his teeth and worried it lightly. “Mmmm.”

“No, that would… be illogical…” Spock answered, his voice thick and his breathing labored, “as I do not eat with my ears.”

“You have pretty cute ears,” Jim pointed out, pulling back to inspect them. He pushed Spock’s hair back from them. “They’re adorable!” Jim enthused. “Like an elf or something.”

“A… congenital malformation known as ‘Stahl’s ear,’” Spock said, looking mildly affronted. “It appears to run in my father’s side of the family.”

“I just read _The Lord of the Rings_ last year – you should read it, you’d like it.”

“I have little time for recreational reading,” Spock pointed out, still seemingly insulted by Jim’s outburst.

“That’s too bad,” Jim said, letting his voice drop down low, “because the elves were the best part.” He leaned back in and picked up where he left off, lavishing attention on Spock’s left ear. “So powerful and sexy,” Jim added, licking the shell of Spock’s ear and making him shiver.

“Perhaps I was too hasty in my judgment,” Spock added, his voice wavering. 

Jim grinned and continued on his previous route, kissing down Spock’s throat to the collar of his heavy sweater. “Aren’t you hot in this?” he asked.

“I am currently, yes.”

“Let me take it off you?”

Spock attempted to sit upright and Jim backed off of him, then helped pull the sweater over Spock’s head. His hair, always so neat whenever Jim saw him – yes, even when he was ill – was attractively in disarray. Jim fluffed it back into place, smiling as the silky strands fell back into place. Jim tossed the sweater to the floor and laid back on top of him, kissing him until he was gasping.

“Sorry, you need a breather?” Jim asked. He leaned back against the back of the sofa, resting his hand on Spock’s abs. Before the other man had a chance to answer, Jim had hooked a finger beneath the hem of the black t-shirt he wore and hiked it up. There was an enticing sprinkling of dark hair around Spock’s belly button and a treasure trail that led… well, out of sight inside his pants, but Jim was keen to see more. He petted the hair absent-mindedly as he looked Spock in the eyes.

“I… that is, my breathing… is adequate… for my needs…” Spock answered. 

“Flustered” was Jim’s favorite flavor of Spock. He leaned in and kissed Spock again, this time slower and more gently, his left hand palming the other man’s growing erection. Spock made high-pitched huffing sounds and pushed his crotch against Jim’s hand. Jim took that to mean he was enjoying their activities and pushed things a bit farther, working Spock’s belt open one-handed and opening his fly. Spock breathed a sigh of relief as the pressure on his straining cock was relieved. Jim distracted him with more kisses even as he pushed Spock’s pants open further and slid his fingers inside his underwear.

Spock’s dick twitched at Jim’s touch, so he kept his touch light. The skin was hot to the touch, silk-over-iron. Jim coaxed it out into the light of the room and glanced down at the glistening head, nearly purple in its arousal now, rising from a nest of damp, dark curls. He licked his lips as his own dick throbbed at the sight of it, and realized he was staring. Spock’s lips found the corner of his jaw and began to kiss him again. He turned his head and returned the kiss, but his mind was more on the beautiful, uncut dick he was slowly jacking, and attention eventually had to be paid.

“Spock?” he said hoarsely, feeling almost drunk as he pulled away. Spock made a noise of inquiry. “You mind if I –“ Jim glanced at Spock’s dick with intent, hoping the other man did not misunderstand him. When he made no reaction, Jim kissed him one last time and then pulled away, slithering down toward the opposite end of the couch. He gently pushed Spock’s thighs apart and settled between them, blowing gently on the exposed head as he looked up at his partner. Spock was staring at the ceiling, his face flushed a deep red, and his fists were fisted at his sides. “Spock?” Jim repeated, and Spock finally met his eyes. He looked at Spock meaningfully, taking a full minute to make his intentions known. 

“Jim –“ Spock rasped finally.

“Yeah.” Jim licked his lips.

“Jim.”

Jim’s mouth was already watering; he took the base of Spock’s dick in hand and let a glob of spit drop from his mouth. Spock flinched when it landed. Jim used his hand to spread it around on the quivering organ, then lowered his head, lips pursed, and dropped an open-mouthed kiss on it, then opened his mouth, prepared to take it in, and – 

“Jim!”

Jim’s head snapped up immediately. Something was wrong. “Huh?”

Spock’s hands were on Jim’s hands, pushing him away as he sat up abruptly. “I apologize. This – I – please, Jim.”

“Yeah, Spock?” Jim reached out again, but Spock caught his wrist in his left hand, restraining him. His grip was tight – almost hard enough to bruise, and Jim immediately pulled back, sitting back on his heels and blinking at Spock in confusion. “Something’s wrong.”

“I do not – I do not think I can do this with you now. I am sorry.”

“I – you sure?” He was still hard, but the look in Spock’s eyes told Jim everything he needed to know – he was clearly terrified about something. “It’s no problem,” Jim said, decisively.

“I am sorry. Please do not –“

“I don’t.” Jim said reassuringly. He shifted his position to ease the pressure on his own aching hard-on, but he hoped he was subtle enough for Spock not to notice.

“I have led you on,” Spock fretted

“No you haven’t. Spock, it’s cool, it really is. I get that you haven’t been with a lot of people. We can just kiss – it’s no big deal.”

But Spock was on his feet suddenly, trying to tuck himself back into the tight jeans he had been wearing, his face crimson as he backed away from the couch and stood in the middle of the room looking forlorn. 

“Spock?”

“I am sorry, Jim, but I just remembered that I have to rise early tomorrow for a meeting with my academic advisor on my thesis. I cannot be late, so I believe it is best if I turn in early.”

Jim couldn’t keep the disappointment out of his voice. “Um, that’s fine.” He rose, straightened his shirt and looked around for his jacket. Picking it up, he faced Spock. “I want you to know I had a really nice time – thanks for the pizza and everything.”

“I too had a very pleasurable evening. _Very_ nice.” Spock said earnestly. 

“OK, I guess I’ll go.” Jim made his way to the door where his knapsack had been discarded and picked it up. “Oh – I almost forgot.” He opened the knapsack and pulled out the t-shirt Spock had lent him the night before. “I washed it, so you can just use it right away if you want.” He held it out to Spock, who took a step forward, the strange hunted expression gradually leaving his face as he took the soft cotton garment into his hand.

“Thank you.”

“Guess I’ll see you tomorrow night at the club then – right?” Jim asked, hating the hopefulness in his voice and yet not caring.

The fact Spock smiled at him made him feel better. “Yes. I will see you tomorrow. Is 10:00 an acceptable time?”

It was a bit early for Jim – the club didn’t usually get hot until after midnight – but he didn’t want to lose the opportunity to see Spock again. “You bet. See you later.” Jim smiled happily as he made his way to the door. “Night, Spock,” he said as he walked out without looking back.

\----

By the time Jim got to the door of Spock’s building, he was practically skipping. Sure, his moves on Spock hadn’t been the smoothest, but they still had a date to see each other the next night at the club. He hopped the subway downtown and got off at Christopher Street, where he could cut over to 6th Avenue and the movie theater where the side door sometimes got stuck open when folks left that way. They were still showing _Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade_ there and he hoped that he could sneak in and see it one more time.

As he cut over on Waverly Place towards Washington Square Park, he caught sight of a familiar blue head sitting on the back of a bench just inside the fence. Walking up, he called out, “Carol? Hey, Carol!” excitedly, hoping she’d be interested in seeing the movie with him – it was always more fun to watch Nazis get pummeled when you had someone else to share it with. As he got closer, she looked over and gave him a sour, warning look. Sensing something was up, Jim slowed, but didn’t divert from his course. He watched with a growing sense of alarm as Carol, a gifted pickpocket, slipped a small packet of something to some guy of indeterminate age. Her moves were subtle, practiced, and quick, but Jim knew exactly what was going on and was able to catch it. Looking around, he caught sight of Pav standing behind a nearby tree, hands in his pockets and looking nervous and miserable at the same time.

“Just what the FUCK do you think you’re doing?” Jim nearly shouted as he approached the park bench. He could feel his face heating up with the force of his anger. He grabbed Carol by the wrist as she slid her hand inside the pocket of the denim jacket she wore. He tugged, and when her hand came out, a pair of tiny plastic baggies fluttered to the ground. There was no mistaking what they were now, the white powder they held gleaming even in the low light in the park. “Drugs, Carol? And you’re using Pav as the broker? He’s just a kid!”

Knowing she was caught and that there was nothing for it, Carol glared at him. Her voice was an angry hiss, her British accent even stronger when she was upset. “Shut up, Jimmy. And in case you didn’t notice, we’re _all_ kids. Do you think I _like_ doing it? We need the money.”

“We don’t need it this bad. We will _never_ need it this bad,” Jim retorted.

“You would think so, but you see, we do. Pav's illness about wiped out our savings, and I don’t know about you, but I like having food to eat and warm clothes in the winter. Come on, it’s just this one time, and Gary –“

Jim felt himself go cold all over. “What did you say?”

Carol pressed her lips together; she knew she’d said too much, and she knew Jim’s history with Gary. 

Gary was almost the first person Jim met when he came to New York. At the time, he still had his art gallery, and he hired Jim to clean the place at night and do odd jobs. He paid well and afterwards he’d buy Jim dinner or take him out to a movie. It was all really nice, and to get a decent meal each day was more than Jim had been assured before that at the homeless shelter where he stayed, hanging close to families so no one would question him about why he was there. Soon the movies became plays and nights out at fancy clubs, and Jim was more than a little star struck. One night, when they were making out, Gary talked Jim into letting him blow him. Jim thought he was pretty lucky that this handsome older guy wanted him, and for a while he let it all go to his head. When Gary asked for Jim to reciprocate, Jim was only too happy to, even though all he’d ever done was kiss another guy. It started to feel weird when Gary started calling him his “little whore.” When Jim objected, Gary hit him and asked him what Jim thought all the food and money and parties were for. 

Jim walked out right then and there, but it soon became clear that Gary was a little obsessed with him. When he lost the gallery, Gary came to find Jim, who’d begun doing odd jobs for Mr. and Mrs. Sulu by that time. Gary was high or drunk or both, and he begged Jim to take him back. In a moment of weakness, Jim did, but it was soon clear where Gary’s money was coming from, and Jim wanted nothing to do with it, not after the train wreck that was Winona Kirk. So Jim told Gary to fuck off, but it was kind of hard to avoid him since most of Gary’s “clientele” tended to frequent the same clubs Jim went to. 

Ever since, it had been a hate-hate relationship, but when Jim was desperate for cash – like he had been when Pav was sick – he let Gary do what he wanted, no questions asked. It wasn’t anything Jim was proud of, but he was always safe, and he always did it on his own terms. At least that was what he told himself.

And now Gary had used the prospect of easy money to worm himself into the lives of the two most important people to Jim, his family, and turn them into street dealers. Not only could it get them put in jail or worse if they were caught, but this part of town was run by the 12th Street Boys, who didn’t take too kindly to newcomers encroaching on their turf. 

“Jim.” Jim’s attention was caught as Pavel walked up to the two of them; he looked pale and scared, as he should be. “I am sorry, Jim, but I wanted to help with the money.”

He looked so earnest that Jim almost let his anger dissipate. “I know, kid. But not like this. Never like this. We’re better than this, haven’t I always said?”

Pavel wagged his head up and down. “Da, da, yes.”

Jim eyed Carol and she stared at him defiantly. He held out his hand, flexing his fingers over his palm. “Now gimme.”

“Nuh-uh, Jimmy, no. Look, I know Gary’s an asshole, but he said we could do it just this once. We can make like a hundred bucks!” she protested.

“Not this way – never this way, Carol. Come on, you know better.” They glared at each other for a solid half minute, but Jim’s will won out and Carol soon looked down at the ground. She pulled out a handful of tiny plastic bags and handed them to him. “And the money,” Jim prompted, and she handed that over grudgingly as well. 

“Now go home, _both of you_ ,” Jim said, shoving everything into his pockets. “I’ll see you there later.”

“Jim, what will you do?” Pavel asked, biting his lip.

Jim shook his head and waved his hand, sending them both on their way, feeling his anger settle into a kind of cold, hard hatred inside his chest. He knew what he was going to do, all right. He was going to kill Gary.


	5. Chapter 5

__  
In starlit nights I saw you  
So cruelly you kissed me  
Your lips a magic world  
Your sky all hung with jewels  
The killing moon  
Will come too soon 

_Fate_  
Up against your will  
Through the thick and thin  
He will wait until  
You give yourself to him 

Spock sat in the lotus position in the middle of his living room floor, on the Turkish rug his mother brought for him from his bedroom at home, listening to the music tape that Jim had given him on the personal listening device he’d purchased that afternoon. The song, one he had not heard before, was so evocative of his last few moments with Jim early that evening that he rewound the tape repeatedly. This was his sixth listening in the last hour.

He ran the fingertips of one hand over his bottom lip, recalling the softness of Jim’s lips, the taste of him. He closed his eyes and imagined Jim was still here, his warmth and his weight atop Spock, his hardness pressing against Spock’s hip. Spock felt a stirring again in his pants and recalled Jim's hands on him, his breath over the turgid flesh of his erection, and his breathing stuttered. He rubbed his palm over himself as the song played out, then pulled it away, self-conscious.

_You give yourself to him  
You give yourself to him_

Never had Spock felt this kind of passion for someone; never had he felt he was allowed to. His father’s teachings had instilled in him that most emotions led to ill-thought acts and their inevitable tragic or humiliating consequences. Such acts served to embarrass not only one’s self but one’s family, and this was a kind of shame Spock was highly conditioned to abhor. Until the last several weeks, he had been content to live by those strictures, but now… 

Since coming to New York to study, he had been exposed to art and music that moved him. He had made friends in Nyota and Gaila who made him feel like his company was valued and sought after. And in Jim – in Jim he had found a person he wanted to explore his emotional life with, for the first time he could ever remember. Jim was someone he could see himself feeling love for, passion, caring. He had never felt that about anyone before – had not thought himself capable of loving any man, actually. Had denied it to himself – had denied it about himself – for so long he had forgotten to consider it as a possibility.

The taboo of it was something that he could not take lightly, the shame. Aside from Nyota and Jim, he had told no one of his sexual preferences, could not. He did not think his parents would understand, nor accept it. He could not help it, but this made him feel shame, had made him wish to be another way. But having met Jim, he no longer found he cared what they thought – or rather, he saw in himself the potential to be the kind of person who didn’t care, and such a thought gave him hope. Earlier in the evening, he had stopped Jim from going any further because he had been afraid of what it would mean – afraid to accept that part of himself. Now he knew this was the very height of illogic: to deny that for which one has empirical proof was facile and erroneous. 

He now regretted stopping Jim – and the current throbbing in his groin seemed to agree with him. He now looked forward to his next date with Jim. Tomorrow night they would meet at _The Enterprise_ and perhaps he would have another chance; perhaps he would have the chance to show Jim what he was willing to do as well. That thought excited and inflamed him, but it also made him nervous. He dropped his hands to his lap, picked up the Walkman again. The next song had begun to play while his attention had been wandering, and its lyrics were no less prescient:

_For once in my life let me get what I want  
Lord knows it would be the first time _

Spock closed his eyes and let the melancholy feeling of the song wash over him and sighed, unspeakably moved.

Moments later, there was a loud bang that startled him from his reverie. He could not think what it could be. He pulled the head phones from his ears and listened carefully: another sound, this one less intense; someone was knocking intermittently on his apartment door. Who could it be at this hour – it was after 1:00 am. Spock rose with his heart pounding in his chest and went to the door. He unlatched the two deadbolts but left the chain lock fastened, then opened the door. There was no one standing there. No one _standing._

“Spock,” a voice rasped weakly from the floor beside the door.

“Jim!” Spock said urgently, closing the door to disengage the chain lock and whipping the door open.

Jim sat with his back against the door jamb, legs outstretched. His face was bloodied and battered, his left eye already swelling shut and bloodshot. He hugged his ribs with his right arm and held himself up with his left – which he had clearly used to pound on the door. 

Spock moved past him and into the hallway and crouched in front of his friend. “Jim, what has happened?”

Jim smiled mirthlessly at him; Spock could see blood staining his teeth. “You should see the other guy.”

“I did not inquire after the other guy, I asked what happened.” Jim shook his head. “You will not tell me?” 

“More like I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

Spock pressed his lips together, frustrated. “Will you let me help you to your feet?”

“Knock yourself out.”

Spock put a hand under Jim’s armpit and the other on his elbow and helped him to his feet with difficulty. Jim winced in obvious pain, hugging his ribs tighter. “You are in pain, you need to go to a hospital.”

“No! No hospitals,” Jim muttered and then moaned in pain. He leaned heavily against Spock, nearly tripping over his own boots.

“Jim, you need help, help I cannot give you.”

“Bones will know what to do.”

“Who?”

“Doctor Leonard McCoy. Saint Vincent’s Hospital.”

“That is all the way downtown.”

“If you don’t want to take me there, I’ll go myself.”

Spock didn’t like Jim’s chances of making it there safely in this shape. His face was pale, almost grey, and his breathing was shallow and pained. He wondered if he’d broken any ribs.

“Please, Spock, I don’t know where else to go,” Jim said with a whimper, and Spock was immediately moved to help him. 

“We will take a taxi,” he said definitively, as if he made these kinds of decisions every day.

\----

“Ah jeez, what the hell happened to you?”

Doctor “Bones” as Jim referred to him was a tall man, white with dark hair and eyes, and a sour disposition. The moment he caught sight of Spock rather unsuccessfully helping Jim through the double doors of the free clinic, he leapt to help, taking Jim’s other arm even as he ordered a nurse to bring a gurney over. Jim cried out in pain as he was helped on top of the thing, making Spock flinch.

Jim’s condition rapidly went downhill on the cab ride down here, his difficulty breathing becoming even more pronounced, as did the pain he was obviously in. Spock could do nothing to relieve his distress, and had spent the entire ride impotently rubbing Jim’s arm in what he hoped might be a soothing manner, but which he knew helped not at all. He threw an extra $20 bill at the cabbie to help him get Jim inside the building, but the man had gone the moment he was clear. Luckily, the doctor was on duty and near at hand when Spock asked for him, though the fact he had an obviously injured man with him certainly went a long way to gaining the attention Spock wanted.

Spock followed the procession of medical professionals accompanying Jim into an examination room because no one told him otherwise. McCoy was barking orders to a nurse while he checked Jim’s vitals and reported them to another nurse. The first nurse approached with a pair of scissors.

“Oh no,” Jim gasped weakly through his pain, putting a hand on her arm.

“Jim, come on, she’s trying to help,” McCoy said.”

“Do NOT damage the jacket,” Jim begged. “It was my dad’s. Please, Bones.”

McCoy stared at Jim, who stared back as defiantly as he could while in such obvious pain. “Fine,” McCoy said, rolling his eyes. “But taking it off ya’s gonna hurt like a sumbitch, Jim. You really up for that?”

“Do it,” Jim said through clenched teeth. 

The doctor expertly rolled him onto his side to remove one arm and then the other. When Jim was rolled onto his second side, the pressure on his injured ribs made him cry out. When the doctor settled him onto his back, Spock noticed he had passed out.

“These damn kids, I don’t know what gets into their fool heads,” McCoy muttered, tossing the jacket to the floor behind himself; Spock picked it up.

One of the nurses, a young blond, took up the scissors again and cut the sweatshirt Jim wore down the center, then the t-shirt he wore, exposing his chest. The doctor cursed when they saw what Jim’s clothing hid – dark red marks and abrasions – some in the shape of a boot – decorated the pale skin, and his chest was swelling alarmingly on one side.

McCoy cursed, took the stethoscope that hung around his neck and put the earpieces in, listening carefully to Jim’s heart and lungs. “Dang it! Christine, I think his lung’s punctured. I’m gonna need a portable x-ray in here stat.” 

The nurse hurried from the room and McCoy moved around the gurney to the other side. When he glanced up he caught sight of Spock. “What’re you doing in here?” he demanded.

“I brought him in.”

“You that Gary asshole Jim was seeing a while back? Who said you could come into my exam room? You here to make sure he’s OK so you can what, use him again? Abuse him again? Your kind is sick, you know that? He’s just a kid – a 16 year old kid and this is how you treat him?”

“What?”

“You think you’re the first john I’ve seen bring one of these kids in here, scared outta his wits because of some drug overdose or maybe you hit ‘im a little bit too hard? What are you more scared of, that he’ll die or that you’ll go to jail for it? Well, you don’t have to worry much, because he’s not likely to press charges and the cops around here don’t mind looking the other way. Hope you brought cash.”

Spock gaped at the man.

“You know what, you make me sick, get out of here.” When Spock didn’t move, McCoy practically shouted, “Get out of here before I kick your ass for you, I swear to god.”

Spock fled the room, Jim’s leather jacket clutched in his hands.

\----

The sun was rising before anyone came to talk to Spock. He had answered a nurse’s questions earlier in the night, but had been left to his own devices since. 

A throat cleared and he looked up, surprised to see Doctor McCoy standing in the doorway of the waiting room. Spock had not seen him since they wheeled Jim over to the Emergency Room of the main hospital; the clinic apparently was not equipped to handle Jim’s injuries.

Spock rose, Jim’s jacket in his hands; he held it before himself, illogically, as if it was a shield to protect him from the doctor’s wrath.

“He’s gonna be fine,” McCoy said before Spock had a chance to inquire. “We had to admit him, and he’ll be hopping mad later when he wakes up, but he’ll recover.”

Spock’s relief must have been evident, because McCoy scowled. 

“He was in a really bad way – you should have taken him to a hospital where you were, not dragged him all the way down here. That delay could have killed him.”

Spock nodded; he could formulate no response.

“Look, what I said before…” McCoy shifted from foot to foot. “Jimmy told me who you were, he told me what you did. You saved his life, even if bringing him here was a damn stupid thing. Anyway, I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

Spock blinked at him, wordless. 

“Can I get you some coffee or something?”

“He is 16?” Spock finally spoke, blurting the first thing he thought of.

McCoy looked sheepish. “You didn’t know?”

“I assumed he was my age, or at least 21 if he was allowed inside _The Enterprise_ ” Of all the things to fixate on, Spock thought, this was the least of them. Jim was alive, he was going to make a full recovery, but all Spock had been able to think about was that the man he’d been spending time with… was a boy.

McCoy rubbed the back of his neck with a large hand. “Yeah, well, he’s probably got an ID somewhere that says he _is_. You’re telling me you really didn’t know?”

“He is a… a prostitute?”

McCoy ground his teeth together so hard Spock could see the muscles in his jaw clench. When he answered, he was clearly choosing his words carefully. “Look, these runaways, they sometimes do what they have to do, you understand? To survive? Don’t damn him, Spock, damn the ones who take advantage.”

Spock lowered his eyes. 

“Did you want to see him?” When Spock still did not respond, McCoy approached him, laying a companionable hand on Spock’s shoulder. “I’ll take you back.” 

McCoy ushered Spock through a confusing warren of hallways in the bowels of the hospital before coming to an elevator and going up three floors and walking through another series of halls. Spock quickly lost track of all the turns, but concluded it did not matter. They finally stopped in front of a closed door.

“He’s inside there, and he’ll be a bit loopy from the painkillers.”

Spock nodded and took a deep breath, then opened the door and walked in.

Perhaps it was the fact Spock knew now that Jim was a boy of 16, but he looked impossibly young and vulnerable lying in the hospital bed, the sole occupant of the double room. His face, hours later now, was unspeakably worse than before, the swelling and bruising from the beating he’d taken nearly closing his left eye. He wore a scant cotton hospital gown, a blanket covering him from the chest down. His arms rested at his sides, one of them turned up, and Spock could see where the needle from an IV pierced the skin and was taped into place. 

Spock was suddenly overwhelmed by an influx of emotions – rage at those who had done this, worry about Jim’s health, fear for his safety. But beneath all of that was something he barely recognized: grief. Because though he was looking at Jim now, though the boy would recover from his injuries, Spock knew that whatever future he might have imagined or any relationship he might have hoped for, he could never see Jim after this day.

The realization prompted a pained noise from Spock, loud enough that Jim started and eventually opened his eyes. “Spock?” he said, his voice just barely above a whisper. “You still here?”

“I – have your jacket,” Spock said, apropos of absolutely nothing.

Jim smiled and then winced – his bottom lip was split and bloody. “Thank you for saving it – it was my dad’s. He died in Vietnam, you know? Saved a bunch o’ guys first though, but that’s about the only thing I have of his. That and my knapsack.”

“Then I am glad to have spared such an important heirloom for you.”

“Thanks for looking after me, too – I’m sorry I put you through that, but I couldn’t think of anyone else –“

“Jim, you are 16,” Spock blurted out, interrupting him. 

Jim’s face went pale. “Dammit, Bones,” he muttered. “Age is just a number, right?” he said a moment later, his lips quirking up on one side; he winced again.

“You lied to me.”

“I never lied – I only left out pertinent demographic details.”

“You knew I believed you to be close to my own age.”

“No, I actually didn't.”

“I met you at _The Enterprise_. The minimum age for admission there is 21. I made a logical conclusion as to your age.”

Jim’s face darkened. “Boy, you really are naïve. Half the people who go there are under 18.”

“I do not believe that can possibly be true.” Spock had seen the bouncers give young people with fake identification very hard times at the door.

Jim rolled his eyes. “Fine, whatever.”

Spock straightened his back and took a deep breath. “Jim, I am grateful that you will recover from your injuries. I can no longer see you.” 

“What, because I’m 16?”

“Yes.”

“So?”

“When I think of what we almost – it disturbs me to think of what _I_ almost did to you.”

“What _you_ did to _me_? That’s not the way I remember it happening.”

“Still, you are underage and your ability to consent must be called into question.” 

“Trust me, most guys I fuck don’t seem to have a problem with it,” Jim said, cold anger making his eyes flash. “Some of ‘em even like it.”

Spock flinched at his implication and drew himself up, straightening his back. “Nevertheless, I could not put myself among their number.”

“Yeah, but you are. Aren’t you?”

“No.”

“You’re a perv just like the rest of ‘em.”

“No.” Spock felt a surge of anger and took a step toward the bed, halving the space between them.

“Isn’t that what you’re so uptight about? You know you’re a pervert – whenever you think about doing it with a guy, you know it to be true. And all you can think about is what your dad’ll say. What’ll he think of his perfect son when he knows what you are?”

“No!” Spock nearly shouted, taking the last step forward and looming over Jim, breath ragged in his ears.

Jim barely flinched, and his eyes glittered. “I’ll bet you’d really like to hit me now, wouldn’t you? Well go right ahead, I’m used to it. It’s how everyone else in my life deals with me, anyway. Only try hitting me on my right side, will you? I don’t think my left eye could take it.”

Spock clenched his fists and breathed deeply to calm himself. “If that is what you think of me, then I cannot change your mind. But no, Jim, I could never hurt you, or anyone. It is against not only my nature but against the morality on which I was raised. No, I could not hit you and I could not hurt you, though you have hurt me.” 

“Jesus, Spock.”

Spock interrupted him, his voice low and pained, “I thought I could love you, Jim, that I was falling in love with you, but you lied to me. What’s more, your lies have made me worse than a criminal – they have made me no better than those who have victimized you. I do not know how to deal with that at the present time, or if I will ever be able to.” He stopped speaking then, his emotions having gotten the better of him; there was a tightening in his throat that made speech difficult. He shook his head. Jim’s face before him swam and blurred, and Spock knew that he had tears in his eyes. This realization disturbed him – we was not one to cry about anything. He blinked them away and ignored them.

Jim’s mouth opened with shock. “God, Spock, I – I’m sorry, I –“

“I can no longer listen to your lies,” Spock choked out around the lump in his throat, his voice a harsh whisper, and he left.

\----

 **TWO WEEKS LATER**

_I try to laugh about it_  
Cover it all up with lies  
I try and laugh about it  
Hiding the tears in my eyes  
Because boys don't cry  
Boys don't cry 

Spock fast forwarded through the song, annoyed with himself for finding it so appealing in his mood. He had work to do, and he would have to pack soon if he was going to accompany Nyota to her parents’ home in Connecticut for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. He wished he hadn’t agreed to go, but his mother thought it best he not come home quite yet, as Sarek was still “processing his anger” over Spock’s decision to delay the pursuit of his doctorate, and Nyota did not want to leave him alone in the city. Reeling from the high emotions he was feeling having made the decision – elation, joy, fear – he accepted her invitation without really thinking it through properly. Faced with leaving the city the next morning, he regretted his momentary lapse, for he would much prefer to be alone over the long weekend. 

Damn that song for fitting his mood so perfectly.

Spock removed the headphones and set his Walkman down on his desk, rising to go and prepare himself some coffee; he was waylaid by a knock on the door.

“Doctor McCoy,” he said with surprise when he saw the man standing in the hall.

“This place rent controlled?” McCoy asked, looking at the molding on the doorframe appreciatively.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Can I come in?”

Spock stood aside and let him in. “I was about to make a pot of coffee – would you like to join me?”

“That’d be nice,” McCoy said, a surprised expression on his face as if he had not expected this basic courtesy. 

Spock invited him to sit and went into the kitchen to take care of the task. “How do you take it?” he called out when it was done. 

“Black, no sugar,” was the response. 

When Spock entered the room with two steaming mugs, he found the doctor sitting with his hands on his thighs, staring straight ahead of him. “Doctor?” Spock said, getting his attention and handing him his coffee.

“Thanks.” He sipped. “This is actually good.”

“Do not sound so shocked.”

“No, I mean I’m so used to the crap they serve at the hospital that it’s a surprise when I get anything decent. Thank you.”

Spock sat down in his battered easy chair and sipped his own coffee. “The beans are apparently roasted in the Italian fashion.”

“You don’t say? Those I-talians…”

They sipped in silence for a few moments. “What is the purpose of your call?” “I bet you’re wondering why I came up here.” Both men talked over each other.

“Why?” Spock asked.

“Jim gets out of the hospital today.”

Spock could feel his face redden and cursed his fair complexion. “I cannot predict why you would think that is important to me,” he said coldly.

McCoy raised an eyebrow. “Can’t you?” 

Spock stayed silent. 

“He’s almost fully recovered,” McCoy went on. “He should have been released days ago, but I wanted to be sure he’d be 100% when he left, and social services is payin’, so hell if I care. I’m his doctor, I say when he can leave.”

“I presume Jim is less than amenable to that,” Spock commented.

“Hell if I care about that, either.” McCoy leaned forward and put his mug down on the coffee table and clasped his hands between his knees. “I was able to find him a spot at Horizon House – it’s a kind of a halfway house for kids like him, runaways. I researched it myself – they get good results, he’ll be safe. Hell, he might even be able to finish school.”

“That is fortunate for Jim. You are a good man.”

“I’m not, but I’ll take the compliment. It’s why I’m here, actually. The problem with these kinds of places is that a lot of the kids wash out of the programs. They have to live by the house rules, they have to go to school, do chores, that kind of thing. Now, I don’t think Jim’s necessarily a bad kid, but he’s lived too long on his own, and he’s going to balk at the idea of being held to someone else’s rules.”

Spock tended to believe him, but still: “That is unfortunate, but I fail to see how it is relevant to me.”

“Oh, you’re totally relevant. The rate of recidivism falls right down if the kids feel like they’ve got something to stick around for, someone with a stake in their future, someone who can be a guiding influence.”

“That is somewhat of a relief. I confess to thinking much about Jim’s future prospects; you are very generous with your time to offer that guidance to him.”

“I wasn’t talking about me, kid,” McCoy said, a grin not unlike that of a shark on his face.

“No. And I am no kid.”

“Age is relative. To me, you’re both practically toddlers.”

Spock frowned. “I cannot.”

“Why not?”

“He deliberately misrepresented himself to me; I believed him to be of age when he was not. I – I almost led us both down a path that we would both regret.”

“I understand, but knowing what you know, can you really hold it against him?”

Spock opened his mouth to speak but found he could offer up no logical reason other than the fact that Jim had hurt him, and his reasons for doing so could easily be construed as a need for self-preservation. Could Spock really hold that against Jim when it was weighed against whatever fate awaited him in a life on the streets?

“Just say you’ll think about it – the kid just needs a friend, one he cares about impressing. I think that’s you.” 

“I will think about it.”

“That’s all I ask.”

\----

The following Monday, Spock paid a visit to Horizon House. Its director, who was expecting him, showed him to a bedroom situated at the end of a long hallway at the back of the second floor. As Spock walked down the hallway, he could hear the muted strains of yet another one of Jim’s songs being played; Spock recognized it from the tape of Jim’s he still possessed, and he paused in the doorway, listening.

_It was fun for a while_  
There was no way of knowing  
Like a dream in the night  
Who can say where we're going  
No care in the world  
Maybe I'm learning  
Why the sea on the tide  
Has no way of turning 

Jim sat on one of two narrow beds in the room, with his nose, unsurprisingly, buried in a book, though he also held a pencil and was writing things in it. As if sensing another’s presence, Jim looked up. When he saw Spock, his expression went from surprised and hopeful to somber and mortified in less than a second. He reached over to lower the volume on the tape player that sat on the desk beside the bed and got clumsily to his feet. “Hey,” he said, standing there, sheepish and forlorn, looking very much like he wanted to leave the room.

“Hello, Jim.” 

“How’ve you, uh, how ya been?”

“Quite well. I am relieved to see you have had no lasting ill effects from… from the last time I saw you.” Jim’s face still bore bruises, but they were fading.

“Yeah, they, uh, they arrested Gary. Got him with like a buttload of drugs, so I probably won’t even have to testify.” Jim glanced up at Spock, his blue eyes looking haunted, then looked away.

“Doctor McCoy told me I might find you here.”

Jim rolled his eyes. “Bones – God, he’s such an old lady.”

“I think he cares about your well-being.”

“I guess.” Jim stared up at the ceiling over Spock’s head and Spock was at a loss for words. “You want to sit down?” Jim asked, offering Spock the desk chair.

“Thank you.”

“You want a snack? I have those cheesy crackers with the peanut butter…”

“I am not hungry.” More awkward silence. “You have a roommate, I see?”

“Oh, yeah – my friend, Pavel. He’s Russian or something. Carol’s in a room just down the hall.”

“Another friend?”

“More like a family I think.”

“That is good – having a family is… good.”

“Look, Spock,” Jim said, sighing and sitting back on the bed after another long and awkward silence. “I don’t know why Bones made you come here, but since you are, I want to take the chance to say I’m sorry about what happened. I don’t know what I was doing. I guess I just liked you and wanted you to like me back, and I didn't think about what that really meant, what it might do to you, and I’m sorry. Really and truly.”

“I accept your apology, Jim. And I apologize for my harsh words when last we spoke, and for leaving you as you were. I was hurt and I lashed out, and –“

“And you were totally justified, so don’t even apologize.” He looked down and started picking at his cuticles. “I’m glad you came, but you don’t have to stay. I’ll be all right, you know?”

“I think I do know, but… does that mean we cannot try to be friends?”

Jim looked up at him, startled. “I dunno, can we?”

Spock inclined his head. “I hope so.”

“Can we though, after what happened? After what we did?”

Spock paused, gathering his thoughts. “I have devoted much thought to this very topic over the last several days, and I realized that, although I am five years older than you, in many ways, I am just as immature in my emotional development as you are. Unlike you, I have not that easy capacity to form interpersonal relationships, and I would very much like to rectify that. I believe it would be… an important stage in my own personal development. If you are amenable, Jim, I would like to be your friend.”

Jim smiled then, his face open and unguarded, and something in Spock’s chest loosened. “I would like that very much.”

Spock glanced over at the book Jim had left sitting on the bed – it was for an SAT prep course. “What is this? Are you interested in attending college?”

Jim shrugged. “I’m cultivating options.”

“You might consider receiving a high school diploma first.”

Jim waved his hand. “Bones said I could get my GED.”

“All right then. What areas are you most interested in studying?”

“Well, I’m thinking maybe philosophy or English literature.”

“Yes, those are two fields with many job prospects.”

“Shut up, I’m still undecided.”

“Well, starting with SAT preparatory courses is a valid strategy. Do you require tutoring? Perhaps I can be of assistance.”

“Maybe, I dunno. I just took, like, a practice test and I was scoring it when you got here.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I just have to add it all up.” He picked up the book and a pencil, and took a minute to compile his score. “Oh,” he said, disappointed. “I don’t think I did very well on the English part, I only got an 800.”

Spock stared at him. “What did you get in math?”

Jim looked down at the sheet and scratched his head. “Only a 730? What the hell, man? This sucks!” 

“Jim,” Spock said patiently. “An 800 is the highest score.”

“Oh. I really suck only at math then.”

Spock sighed. “Clearly.”

“Will you help me get a better score?”

“I will try my best.”

“Cool. What did you get, anyway?”

“I received a 1600.”

“Oh.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“Well, I wanted to beat you. A tie is not beating you.”

“No, I suppose not.”

Jim grinned at him, and Spock found his good mood infectious. He knew that they both had a lot of growing to do, and Jim had many problems to overcome due to what McCoy implied had been an abusive past, but in this moment he had faith they could both be successful. In this moment, he believed they could conquer the galaxy if they set their minds to it.

“So this is what it feels like to just be friends,” Jim said thoughtfully some time later. 

“Just friends.”

“You know, I turn 17 in like a month and a half.”

“Just friends, Jim.”

“Can’t blame a guy for trying, Spock.”

“No, I suppose I cannot.”

\----

Thank you for your time. You can also find me on Tumblr @rabidchild67, I hope you'll consider following me there.

\----

[Here is a playlist](http://open.spotify.com/user/d_stefaniak/playlist/4fJS641GpMQy3V82Su9rOZ) of all the songs referenced in this story (except the last one, which came out in 1993, but reminded me of the characters too much not to include it). You can access it on Spotify.

1\. Blue Monday – New Order  
2\. She Bangs the Drums – The Stone Roses  
3\. Stigmata – Ministry  
4\. This Corrosion – The Sisters of Mercy  
5\. Why Can’t I Be You – The Cure  
6\. Love Will Tear Us Apart – Joy Division  
7\. Temptation – New Order  
8\. The Killing Moon – Echo and the Bunnymen  
9\. Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want – The Smiths  
10\. The Cure – Boys Don’t Cry  
11\. More Than This – Roxy Music  
12\. Regret – New Order

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.S. They totally hook up a couple years later. I meant to get into it but ran out of time. I might write a timestamp someday.


End file.
